Гүлді өсімдіктер туысы: Тораңғыл (Gundelia)

Genus of flowering plants

Gundelia or tumble thistle is a low to high (20–100 cm) thistle like perennial herbaceous plant with latex, spiny compound inflorescences, reminiscent of teasles and eryngos, that contain cream, yellow, greenish, pink, purple or redish purple disk florets. It is assigned to the family Asteraceae. Flowers can be found from February to May. The stems of this plant dry out when the seeds are ripe and break free from the underground root, and are then blown away like a tumbleweed, thus spreading the seeds effectively over large areas with little standing vegetation. This plant is native to the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Opinions differ about the number of species in Gundelia. Sometimes the genus is regarded monotypic, Gundelia tournefortii being a species with a large variability, but other authors distinguish up to nine species, differing in floret color and pubescence. Young stems are cooked and eaten in the Middle East and are said to taste like a combination of artichoke and asparagus.

Gundelia tournefortii is a spiny hemicryptophyte with stems 20–100 cm tall that branch from the base. The first growth of the plant consists of a rosette of leaves. All parts contain a milky latex. The parts above the surface break from the root and may be blown away by the wind as a tumbleweed, assisting in the dispersion of the seed.

The plant develops a woody, vertical rootstock of up to 4 cm in diameter, at the surface usually covered by the remains of old leaves. The leaves are sessile or decurrent at their base with spiny wings, and alternate set along the stems. The lowest leaves are usually 7–30 cm long and 4–16 cm wide, pinnately dissected and the sections of the larger leaves may be pinnately parted themselves, and have a dentate or serrate margin, all tipped with spines. The midvein and sideveins are prominent, whitish, sometimes tinged purple. The leaf surface may be covered in spiderweb like hairs, that tend to wither away quickly.

The pentameric corollas are usually 7–10  mm long, gloomy purple or yellowish outside, white to bright yellow, greenish, flesh colored or silvery to red purple inside, with spreading narrow lobes of 3–4 mm mm  long  and about 1 mm wide, the tube hairless inside. The five merged anthers form a cylinder of 4–6  mm long, yellow or brownish in color. The style arms are also brownish.

Like in all Asteraceae, the pentameric flowers have anthers that are fused together forming a tube through which the style grows. The style picks up the pollen on hairs along its length and splits into two style branches at its tip. These parts sit on an inferior ovary that grows into an indehiscent fruit in which only one seed develops (a so called cypsela). All florets (in this case only one) are set on a common base (the receptacle), and are surrounded by several rows of bracts, that form an involucre. A particular character of Gudelia that is rare among the Asteraceae is that florets are gender specialised, with the central floret being functionally hermaphrodite and the marginal florets being functionally male. Scolymus is also a thistle like herbaceaceous perennial with anastomosing latex ducts, related to Gundelia, but it has many yellow, orange or white ligulate florets in each flowerhead, which are arranged with many in a spike like inflorescence, or with a few at the end of the stems.

Gundelia contains several essential oils, with large proportions (20 25% each) of thymol and germacrene D.

As far as known, the tumble thistle was first collected during an expedition by Leonhard Rauwolf (1573–1575), and this specimen can now be found in the National Herbarium in Leiden, the Netherlands. Tournefort, Von Gundelsheimer and Claude Aubriet also collected this plant while traveling through Greece, Turkey, former Armenia and Persia (1700–1702). Since Von Gundelsheimer was the first to have sighted the plant, his companions began to call it Gundelia. Tournefort already observed the remarkable morphology of the compounded flowerheads. Carl Linnaeus in 1753 adopted and published this name, providing the correct name.

Debate on the number of subtaxa remains and some authors think there is only one species, Gundelia tournefortii. Others also recognise G. aragatsi, a form only known from Armenia, that has brown red corollas and very felty inflorescences. Some even distinguish up to nine different taxa.

Pedanius Dioscorides called this plant silybum. The genus Gundelia is named to honor Andreas von Gundelsheimer (1668–1715), a German botanist, while the species name tournefortii was named after Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, a French botanist, who together undertook a botanical journey to the Levant, during which the species was collected, described and illustrated. In autumn, the dried yellow layers of the plant cover all the mountains, so much so that the degree that can be seen even from space. The tumble thistle can be found in Cyprus, Turkey (Anatolia), Armenia, Azerbaijan, Northern Iraq, northern Iran, Afghanistan, western Syria, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. The base of the young leaves which is still under the surface is used by Bedouin and Arabs to make akkub soup. In the West Bank, young flowerheads, stems and leaves are fried in olive oil, mixed with a stew of meat chops until well done, and served mixed with yogurt. Gundelia is said to taste like something between asparagus and artichoke.

Traditionally, Gundelia is used to treat a wide variety of ailments such as liver diseases, diabetes, chest pain, heart attacks, pain in the chest and the stomach, leukoderma, diarrhea and bronchitis.

Fully grown foliage is used to feed livestock in spite of the spines, both fresh (in Syria and Palestine) and dry (in Kurdistan and Iran).

Some Bible scholars think that the tumbleweed that is spoken of in Psalm 83, verse 14 "Make them like tumbleweed, O my God, like galgal before the wind" is Gundelia. Akkub, the biblical name for this species, is already mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud.