Teucrium is a cosmopolitan genus of flowering plants in the mint family Lamiaceae, commonly known as germanders.
Description
Plants in the genus
Teucrium are perennial herbs or shrubs with four-cornered stems, often with simple hairs and sessile glands. The leaves are arranged in opposite pairs, simple or with three leaflets sometimes with lobed or serrated edges. The flowers are arranged in a thyrse, sometimes in a cyme in leaf axils. The flowers have five more or less similar
fused at the base, and the corolla is white or cream-coloured with five lobes forming two lips. The upper lip is usually much reduced in size and the lower lip has three lobes, the central lobe usually larger than the side lobes. There are four
attached near the base of the petals and the fruit is a
schizocarp with four segments.
Taxonomy
The genus
Teucrium was first formally described in 1753 by
Carl Linnaeus in
Species Plantarum.
The name
Teucrium was used by Pedanius Dioscorides for several species in this genus, and is believed to refer to
King Teucer of
Troy who used the plant in his medicine.
Species
(See List of
Teucrium species)
Teucrium is a cosmopolitan genus with about 300 species, the distribution centred on the Mediterranean. There are about thirteen species endemic to Australia.
Fossil record
†
Teucrium tatjanae seed
are known from the
Oligocene,
Miocene and
Pliocene of western
Siberia, Miocene and Pliocene of central and southern
Russia and Miocene of
Lusatia. The fossil seeds are similar to seeds of the extant
Teucrium orientale.
[The Pliocene flora of Kholmech, south-eastern Belarus and its correlation with other Pliocene floras of Europe by Felix Yu. VELICHKEVICH and Ewa ZASTAWNIAK - Acta Palaeobot. 43(2): 137–259, 2003]
†
Teucrium pripiatense seed fossils have been described from the Pliocene Borsoni Formation in the Rhön Mountains of central
Germany.
[The floral change in the tertiary of the Rhön mountains (Germany) by Dieter Hans Mai - Acta Paleobotanica 47(1): 135-143, 2007.]
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