User:DavidAnstiss/Astrantia pontica

Astrantia pontica, is a species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae. It has long reddish (or white) flowers.

Description
It is very similar in form to Astrantia major

Fruits 5 - 6 mm long. (with calyx teeth), 2 - 3.5 mm wide., cylindrical in outline, narrowed towards the base. There is no carpophorus. The mericarps are almost round in cross section, with approximately equal ribs, covered with bubble-like swollen, blunt and sharp scales.

Name Status RHS Accepted name

Plant range Caucasus

in the western part of caucasus

a pontica coenoses occupy scress and cobble substratum in limestone mountain ranges of colchis (Abkhazeti)

Aphid Myzus ornatus uses A. pontica as a host plant.

Taxonomy
The specific epithet pontica, refers to the Latin term for Pontus, a city of the Black Sea.

Plant specimens were found on Mt "Monid Iyschkha" in the Abkhazia region, within South Caucasus in 1893, and in 1894 by Nikolai Albov (recorded as N. Alboff). Then A. pontica was originally described and published by the Russian botanist Nikolai Albov in 'Prodromus Florae Colchicae' (Prodr. Fl. Colchic.) on page 99 in 1895. It was also published in Bull. Herb. Boiss. Vol.3 on page 521 in 1895.

Distribution and habitat
It is native to the Caucasus region in Europe, or Transcaucasia region in Asia.

Range
Abkhazii,

It is found in Adygea within the Lagonaki Highlands. It is a relict with restricted range; similar to Woronowia speciosa, Campanula autraniana and Ranunculus helenae.

It is listed as an Euxine-Colchic Endemic plant.

Other sources

 * W