Coffee Family
Rubiaceae (roo-bi-A-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Leaves simple and entire
- Leaves opposite or whorled
- Small star-shaped flowers
- Ovary usually inferior
Description (Jepson)
- Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
- 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
- Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
- Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
- Taproot system
- Annual and perennial herbs and shrubs (some trees and vines)
- Stems sometimes square
- Leaves
- Simple (not divided into leaflets) and entire (with smooth margins)
- Usually opposite (2 leaves at each junction with stem) or whorled (3 or more leaves/flowers at stem junction)
- Flowers
- Inflorescence (flower arrangement) in a great variety of forms
- Small, usually bisexual, star-shaped flowers
- Flower parts usually in fours
- Ovary usually inferior (below the attachment of other flower parts)
- Fruit is a drupe (a fleshy fruit with usually 1 seed in a hard inner shell — a stone fruit), berry (a usually multi-seeded fruit with a fleshy ovary wall), or nutlet (a small, dry fruit that does not split open, derived from a multi-chambered ovary)
Notes
- Approximately 6,000 species worldwide
- Includes bedstraws, coffee species, gardenias, and Cinchona species (source of quinine)
- Scientific name from the included genus Rubia, from the Latin for “red”
- Rubia species were extensively cultivated in the past as the source of a commercially important red dye, commonly called madder
- Represented by 6 species at Edgewood
General References
Calflora Database. 2014. Berkeley, California.
Calscape. 2018. California Native Plant Society.
Charters, M.L. 2015. California Plant Names: Latin and Greek Meanings and Derivations.
Charters, M.L. 2017. Southern California Wildflowers: Guide to the Pronunciation of Specific, Generic and Family Names.
Corelli, T. 2004. Flowering Plants of Edgewood Natural Preserve (2nd. ed.). Monocot Press, Half Moon Bay, California.
Elpel, T.J. 2013. Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification. HOPS Press, Pony, Montana.
Flora of North America. efloras.org.
Harris, J.G., and M.W. Harris. 2013. Plant Identification Terminology: An Illustrated Glossary. Spring Lake Publishing, Spring Lake, Utah.
Keator, G. 2009. California Plant Families. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California.
Native American Ethnobotany DB.
Regents of the University of California. Jepson eFlora. Jepson Herbarium. University of California, Berkeley.
Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family
