Scaevola 

Location & distribution maps

Phylogeny & links to associated information

Wikipedia links:       Angiosperms  > Eudicots > Asterids >  Campanulids >  Asterales > Goodeniaceae > Scaevola 

Other links:     http://www.flora.sa.gov.au/cgi-bin/speciesfacts_display.cgi?form=speciesfacts&name=Scaevola_humilis

Plant  information

Common name:        Fanflower  

• Also scaevolas, half-flowers, and naupaka (the plants' Hawaiian name)

Conservation status: unkown

Etymology:   

• Scaevus in Latin means 'left-handed'

Flowers:                  

• The flowers are shaped as if they have been cut in half

• Many Hawaiian legends have been told to explain the formation of the shape of the flowers

• In one version a woman tears the flower in half after a quarrel with her lover

• The gods, angered, turn all naupaka flowers into half flowers and the two lovers remained separated while the man is destined to search in vain for another whole flower

Fruit:                         

• Most Australian Scaevola have dry fruits 

• By contrast, nearly all species outside Australia have fleshy fruit making dispersal by frugivores easy

Leaves:         

Stem:         

Roots:         

Habit:        

• Perennial herb to 50 cm high 

• Most Australian Scaevola have sprawling, herbaceous to shrubby habits

• By contrast, nearly all species outside Australia have shrub habits 

Habitat:   

Distribution:                  

• Scaevola is the only Goodeniaceae genus that is widespread outside of Australia

• In at least six separate dispersals, about 40 species have spread throughout the Pacific Basin, with a few reaching the tropical coasts of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans

• Center of diversity is Australia and Polynesia

• There are around 80 species in Australia, occurring throughout the continent, in a variety of habitats

• Diversity is highest in the South West, where around 40 species are endemic

• The Hawaiian Islands 

  • Are home to ten Scaevola species, nine of which are endemic.

  • Eight of the indigenous species are the result of a single colonization event

  • Scaevola glabra and Scaevola taccada arrived separately to produce a total of three colonizations of Hawaii by Scaevola

  • Some of the endemic species are of hybrid origin

• The Pacific and Indian Oceans

  • Beach naupaka (Scaevola taccada synonym S. sericea) occurs throughout the Pacific and Indian Oceans and is considered an invasive species in Florida, USA, and in some islands of the Caribbean including the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas

  • Beachberry or Inkberry (Scaevola plumieri) is widespread along the Atlantic coast of the tropical Americas and Africa; however, it is becoming rarer in areas where S. taccada is displacing native coastal plants.

Species:                     

• World:            > 130 S

• Australia:            80 S

Additional notes:     

• Taxonomy

  • The genus Scaevola was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1771

  • He did not explain the origin of the genus name; it is considered to allude to the one-sided shape of the flowerwhich has a five-lobed tubular corolla

  • Linnaeus created the genus for a species he had previously described as Lobelia plumieri, which is thus the type species

  • Linnaeus did not explicitly use the specific epithet plumieri in combination with the genus Scaevola; the combination Scaevola plumieri was first published by Martin Vahl in 1791

• In Europe, Scaevola aemula is a fairly common container- and bedding plant, usually grown as an annual

• As of January 2020, Plants of the World Online accepted the following 117 species:

Sources of information:

• (2023)