- Plants
- ›Vascular Plants
- ›flowering plants
- ›Dicots
- ›Legumes, Milkworts, and Allies
- ›Legumes
- ›Faboideae
- ›Sophoreae
- ›Thermopsis
Thermopsis turcica
Vuralia is a monotypic genus belonging to subfamily Faboideae of the legume family, Fabaceae, endemic to the area surrounding lakes Akşehir and Eber in southwestern Türkiye. It has a chromosome number of 2n = 18. The single species Vuralia turcica was discovered by Turkish botanists in 1982 and is found only on the shores of lakes Akşehir and Eber. The species is critically endangered, being on the verge of extinction in its native range. The local names of this species translate as Eber yellow and yellow licorice. V. turcica was formerly placed in the genus Thermopsis.
From the article Vuralia on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
V. turcica has a stout rhizome giving rise to top growth of upright habit 30–80 cm in height, bearing stems and trifoliate leaves clad in long, soft hairs and clustered yellow flowers in a terminal racemose inflorescence. The ovary is tripartite, each flower giving rise to three twisted pods, each of which, when ripe, is brown on the exterior and yellow within and approximately 25 mm in length.
Range & habitat
The habitat of V. turkica has sustained damage due to the desiccation of lakes Akşehir and Eber and the herb itself has been largely eradicated as a weed by farmers in the region. Furthermore, sexual reproduction has been impaired by insect damage to ripening seed before maturity. However, the plant is neither widely consumed by herbivores nor exploited for medicinal / pharmaceutical purposes by humans and is able to increase vegetatively by the spread of the fleshy rhizomes, these factors furnishing some defence against possible extinction.
== References ==
Wikipedia: “Habitat loss”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Thermopsis turcica in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 444339.