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Electronic Flora of South Australia species Fact Sheet

Family: Fabaceae
Glycyrrhiza glabra

Citation: L., Sp. Pl. 742 (1753).

Synonymy: Glycyrrhiza glandulifera

Common name: Liquorice.

Description:
Sparsely pubescent erect perennial with woody root (yellow inside) and long thick rhizomes; stems firm, semiwoody, 30-60 cm, sometimes over 1 m long, branched; leaf rhachis 6-17 cm long; leaflets 5-17, elliptic, ovate or oblong, 20-40 x 10-20 mm, obtuse, sometimes mucronate, distinctly oblique-veined, with sessile bright glands on the upper surface; stipules lanceolate, 1-2 mm long, early caducous.

Racemes exceeded by their subtending leaves at least at anthesis; peduncle 5-10 cm long, lax, elongate, many-flowered; flowers 10-13 mm long, on pedicels less than 1 mm long; bracts lanceolate, caducous; calyx short-campanulate, to 6 mm long, covered with white and glandular hairs, teeth lanceolate-subulate, longer than the tube, upper 2 united higher up; standard oblanceolate, c. 10 x c. 3 ram, sessile, blue to violet, sometimes yellowish-white; wings shorter, oblong, shortly auriculate, on long claws; keel shortest, tangentially semicircular, acuminate, without a beak, on a long claw.

Pod linear-oblong, 15-30 x 4-5 mm, compressed, straight, the sutures straight, glabrous or glandular-setose, red-brown, l-6-seeded; seed reniform to subglobular, compressed, c. 3 mm across, dark-brown.

image of FSA2_Glycyrrhiza_gla.jpg
Image source: fig. 325B in J.P. Jessop and H.R. Toelken Ed. 1986. Flora of South Australia (4th edn).

Published illustration: Hegi (1924)lllustrierte Flora von Mittel-Europa 4, 3:t. 1455.

Distribution:  S.Aust.: NL, MU, YP, SL, SE.   Vic.;.   Dry open habitats of south and east Europe, cultivated as a source of liquorice, doubtfully native in North Africa and southeast Asia, introduced to America.

Conservation status: naturalised

Flowering time: apparently through the summer.


SA Distribution Map based
on current data relating to
specimens held in the
State Herbarium of South Australia

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: The name G. glandulifera Waldst. & Kit. (1800) has been given to variants with glandular-setose pods. In S.Aust. on the same specimens pods are both hairy and glabrous.

Author: Not yet available


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