Cystolith from leaf of Ficus elastica Cystolith (Gr. "cavity" and "stone") is a botanical term for outgrowths of the epidermal cell wall, usually of calcium carbonate, formed in a cellulose matrix in special cells called lithocysts, generally in the leaf of plants. Cystoliths are present in certain families, including in many genera of Acanthaceae. Plants in the family Urticaceae, known as stinging nettles, also form leaf cystoliths, but only during their later flowering and seed setting stages.
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Also useful is the varying appearance and arrangement of cystoliths on the leaf surface. The inflorescence is a divided, branching panicle of flowers. Most species are dioecious, but a few are monoecious. Most species have male flowers with either four or five stamens and tepals.
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Cystoliths are always present and some members of this family possess laticifers. Cannabaceae are often dioecious (distinct male and female plants). The flowers are actinomorphic (radially symmetrical) and not showy, as these plants are pollinated by the wind. As an adaptation to this kind of pollination, the calyx is short and there is no corolla.
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The leaf margin is usually serrate to more or less coarsely toothed. The often-lasting bracts are free or fused to each other. The cystoliths are extended to more or less rounded. In 1874, while in Collioure (south of France), French botanist Charles Naudin discovered that strong winds during 24 hours made the stinging hairs of Urtica harmless for a whole week.
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Its liana is tall from a ligneous rhizome approximately thick. Its stems are lax, with scattered stinging hairs between long and with a dense, white cover of simple trichomes long. Leaves are opposite, with interpetiolar stipules united in pairs but deeply incised, and completely covered with white simple trichomes appromately in length. Petioles are long, and its cystoliths are largely punctiform.
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The leaf surfaces is lightly rough to the touch (scabrid), occasionally with scattered appressed glassy hairs on the lower surface. The leaves also have cystoliths (hard stony structures) which are visible as raised opaque dots on upper surface. The lateral veins occur in 20–46 pairs. Stipules are lateral (occasionally interpetiolar) and are up to 21 mm long, with scattered appressed glassy hairs, and have ciliolate margins which lose their hairs.
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It is a lianescent subshrub or erect perennial herb around tall. Its rhizome is around thick; its stems are erect, with numerous deflexed stinging hairs, approximately long. Its leaves are opposite, interpetiolar stipules united in pairs but deeply incised, about long and wide, without conspicuous cystoliths and with scattered, white simple trichomes along the margins. Petioles are long, abaxial surface with scattered pubescence on the veins and with scattered stinging hairs.
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Plants in this family have simple, opposite, decussated leaves with entire (or sometimes toothed, lobed, or spiny) margins, and without stipules. The leaves may contain cystoliths, calcium carbonate concretions, seen as streaks on the surface. The flowers are perfect, zygomorphic to nearly actinomorphic, and arranged in an inflorescence that is either a spike, raceme, or cyme. Typically, a colorful bract subtends each flower; in some species, the bract is large and showy.
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There is not a consistently active cambium - it will always be sequentially formed on the periphery of a new cambium (cambium successively). Dendrosicyos is the first member of the Cucurbitaceae in which such meristem has been demonstrated. The leaves are about 25 cm long and wide, its leaf edge being slightly thorny. On the underside of the leaves are trichomes of from two to seven cells, the cells often containing two cystoliths.
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Members of Poikilospermum are shrubs or tall woody climbers (also known as lianas). The petiolate leaves are alternate; their stipules are often caducous, intrapetiolar, connate, and leathery; their veins are often prominently pinnate; cystoliths occur adaxially in circular groups, abaxially along veins, either punctiform or linear. The inflorescences are solitary and axillary dichotomously branched cymes, they are unisexual (the plants are dioecious). The glomerules are capitate and either on swollen peduncular receptacles (in P. subgen.
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He placed Nelsonioideae within Scrophulariaceae, classified Thunbergiaceae and Mendonciaceae as distinct families and divided his Acanthaceae into two groups (Acanthoideae and Ruelloideae) based on the presence or absence of cystoliths, articulate stems, monothecate anthers, and colpate pollen. In Scotland and Vollesen's 2000 study, they accepted 221 genera and detailed five major groups within Acanthaceae s.s. (that is, those possessing retinaculate fruits), which is equivalent to Acanthoideae Link sensu Lindau 1895. Out of those 221 genera, they placed 201 of them into seven infrafamilial taxa of Acanthaceae, leaving only 20 unplaced.
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Strobilanthes japonica grows 20–50 cm in height, with thin, heavily-branching stems and purplish-red glabrous (smooth) branchlets. Its leaves are simple and opposite, attached by 2–5 cm petioles, are narrow elliptic or lanceolate in shape, 2–5 cm long and 0.5-1.8 cm wide, and are glabrous and densely covered with cystoliths. The plant flowers from August or September to October or November, with 1.5 cm purple to white 5-lobed funnel-shaped corollas, which produce loculicidal capsules with four ovate seeds. The species appears similar to Strobilanthes tretraspermus (Champ.
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The young leaves are edible and can be used as a leaf vegetable, as with a purée U. dioica has a flavour similar to spinach mixed with cucumber when cooked, and is rich in vitamins A and C, iron, potassium, manganese, and calcium. Young plants were harvested by Native Americans and used as a cooked plant in spring when other food plants were scarce.Gregory L. Tilford, Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West, Soaking stinging nettles in water or cooking removes the stinging chemicals from the plant, which allows them to be handled and eaten without injury. After the stinging nettle enters its flowering and seed-setting stages, the leaves develop gritty particles called cystoliths, which can irritate the urinary tract.
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