Cryptantha

Cryptantha
Cryptantha muricata
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Boraginales
Family: Boraginaceae
Subfamily: Boraginoideae
Genus: Cryptantha
Lehm. ex G.Don
Type species
Cryptantha glomerata
Species

about 200, see text.

Cryptantha is a genus of flowering plants in the borage family, Boraginaceae. They are known commonly as cat's eyes and popcorn flowers (the latter name is also used to refer to the closely related genus Plagiobothrys,[1] and members of the subtribe of Amsinckiinae).[2] They are distributed throughout western North America and western South America, but they are absent from the regions in between.[1]

These are annual or perennial herbs usually coated in rough hairs and bearing rounded flower corollas that are almost always white, but are yellow in a few species.[1] Several morphological characters are used to distinguish species from one another, but the most definitive is the form of the nutlet, which varies in shape, size, color, and pattern of attachment.[1]

  1. ^ a b c d Hasenstab-Lehman, K. E. and M. G. Simpson. (2012). Cat's eyes and popcorn flowers: phylogenetic systematics of the genus Cryptantha s. l. (Boraginaceae). Systematic Botany 37(3), 738-57.
  2. ^ "Amsinckiinae". www.sci.sdsu.edu. Retrieved 2 July 2022.