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Bienertia cycloptera is a species of flowering plant that is native to the Middle East, south-eastern Europe, and central Asia. It is a succulent, smooth annual plant with long, curved, cylindrical leaves. Its flowers have both male and female reproducing parts and its fruits are small and spherical. Bienertia cycloptera grows in hot, dry climates with little rainfall and tolerates soils with high salinity levels very well. Due to its specific growing conditions, B. cycloptera is not a very common, nor widespread plant. Even over most of its range, it often grows sparsely in small patches of growth.
One notable aspect of Bienertia cycloptera is its unique C4 photosynthesis mechanism. Unlike most C4 plants, in B. cycloptera the photosynthetic mechanism occurs within a single chlorenchyma cell, without Kranz anatomy.
Bienertia cycloptera is located throughout the Middle East, south-eastern Europe, and central Asia. The plant can be found in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The range of Bienertia cycloptera throughout the Eurasian supercontinent covers an area from 24° to 49° N latitude and from 43° to 67° E longitude. It has an estimated range of 180 km2 (69 sq mi) in the Yerevan floristic region of Armenia, but occupies a mere 28 km2 (11 sq mi) of area. It fits the Deborah Rabinowitz's definition of a rare plant, even though it has a wide geographical range but low abundance where it is present.
In Persia, B. cycloptera is widely used for use in alternative medicine, especially for properties associated with antimicrobial, antihyperglycemic, and lipo catalytic properties. However, there is little scientific research showing evidence of this. A recent article that sought to rectify this lack of knowledge by testing B. cycloptera against different microbes and analyzing its lipid composition, finding a strong correlation with microbe reduction and a wide composition of lipids.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Bienertia cycloptera by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
