''Camoensia'' is a genus of 2 species of
liana
A liana is a long- stemmed, woody vine that is rooted in the soil at ground level and uses trees, as well as other means of vertical support, to climb up to the canopy in search of direct sunlight. The word ''liana'' does not refer to a ta ...
s in the family
, subfamily
Faboideae
The Faboideae are a subfamily of the flowering plant family Fabaceae or Leguminosae. An acceptable alternative name for the subfamily is Papilionoideae, or Papilionaceae when this group of plants is treated as a family.
This subfamily is wide ...
, native to the
Gulf of Guinea
The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean from Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian (zero degrees latitude and longitude) is in the ...
,
Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...
. ''C. scandens'' is cultivated as an
ornamental plant
Ornamental plants or garden plants are plants that are primarily grown for their beauty but also for qualities such as scent or how they shape physical space. Many flowering plants and garden varieties tend to be specially bred cultivars that i ...
; it has one of the largest leguminous flowers, up to 20 cm across.
The genus has classically been assigned to the tribe
Sophoreae
The tribe Sophoreae is one of the subdivisions of the plant family Fabaceae. Traditionally this tribe has been used as a wastebasket taxon to accommodate genera of Faboideae which exhibit actinomorphic, rather than zygomorphic floral symmetry and ...
,
but was recently assigned to its own
monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...
tribe, Camoensieae, on the basis of
molecular phylogenetic
Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...
evidence.
Species of ''Camoensia'' are known to produce
quinolizidine alkaloids
Quinolizidine alkaloids are natural products that have a quinolizidine structure; this includes the lupine alkaloids.
Occurrence
Quinolizidine alkaloids can be found in the plant family of legumes, especially in papilionaceous plants. While t ...
, consistent with their placement in the
genistoid clade.
Gallery
File:363 of 'Expedição Portugueza ao Muata-Ianvo. Os climas e as Producções das terras de Malange á Lunda, etc. pt. I' (11200976764).jpg, Colour plate depicting Camoensia sp.
File:American breeders magazine (1913) (17497773833).jpg, Black and white image of C. scandens (syn. C. maxima)
File:Die Gartenlaube (1883) b 730.jpg, Botanical line drawing from Die Gartenlaube
''Die Gartenlaube – Illustriertes Familienblatt'' (; ) was the first successful mass-circulation German newspaper and a forerunner of all modern magazines.Sylvia Palatschek: ''Popular Historiographies in the 19th and 20th Centuries'' (Oxford: ...
(1883)
References
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Faboideae
Fabaceae genera
{{Faboideae-stub