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Rio Grande Ayenia
Ayenia limitaris
Ayenia limitaris is a rare North American species of flowering plant in the mallow family known by the common names Rio Grande ayenia, Texas ayenia, and Tamaulipan kidneypetal. It is native to an area straddling the Rio Grande in Mexico and the United States. Today it is known from far southern Texas and far northern sections of the Mexican states of Coahuila and Tamaulipas. It has become rare because most of its habitat has been degraded or destroyed.
From the article Ayenia limitaris on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
Description
This is a shrub growing up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) tall. The alternately arranged leaves have hairy heart-shaped blades with toothed edges. The small flowers have pinkish, greenish, or whitish petals. The fruit is a prickly capsule divided into five cells.
Range & habitat
The plant's native habitat was made up of subtropical riparian woodland covered in dense thickets in the floodplains of the Rio Grande delta. It is probably adapted to periodic flooding in the area, an event that is largely contained and prevented today. Only about 5% of the natural habitat, the Texas ebony-anacua (Ebenopsis ebano/Ehretia anacua) plant community, remains in this area. the rest has been fenced and fragmented by roads, canals, and ditches, plowed for agricultural use, and compacted by herds of cattle. Introduced plant species such as Guinea grass (Megathyrsus maximus) have taken hold.
Wikipedia: “Distribution and habitat”
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
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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 Ayenia limitaris 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 159118.