lobelia
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lobelia
lobelia
Lobelia
a genus of plants of the family Lobeliaceae (sometimes included in the family Campanulaceae). They are annual and perennial herbs, subshrubs, and shrubs. The leaves are entire and alternate. The flowers are irregular, in bilabiate or monolabiate corollas, and bisexual. The stamens are united into a tube through which the style with the stigma passes. The fruit is a capsule.
There are approximately 350 species of Lobelia, distributed in humid places in the tropics and subtropics of America and Africa. Fewer species are found in Asia, Australia, and Oceania; only two species are encountered in Europe. There are two species in the USSR: water lobelia (Lobelia dortmanna) and L. sessilifolia. Water lobelia grows in bodies of water in the European USSR. L. sessilifolia is found in bogs, along river banks and lake shores, on floodplains, and near hot springs in Eastern Siberia; in the Soviet Far East this species grows as a weed among rice plantings. In the USSR, Indian tobacco (L. inflata), which is a North American species, and less commonly acrid lobelia (L. urens), which is native to Western Europe, are used as medicinal plants. The aboveground parts of these plants contain the alkaloid lobeline. Some lobelias are cultivated as ornamentals. L. erinus is widely used as an edging plant and in flower beds.
REFERENCE
Atlas lekarstvennykh rastenii SSSR. Moscow, 1962.M. E. KIRPICHNIKOV