[8] A Classical myth, told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, imagines that the water nymph Clytie, in love with the sun god Helios, was scorned by him.

They likewise share in their characteristic terminal styles and highly modified stigmatic heads (basal stigma, infertile apex).

[12] Though it is not palatable and most animals will completely ignore it, there have been cases of horses, swine and cattle being poisoned due to contamination of hay.

[15] Seeds of the Heliotropium genus were discovered in the 1940s and 50s to be responsible for liver disease in populations that consumed them in large quantities, either inadvertently (as a contaminant of food crops) or deliberately (associated with the ingestion of herbal infusions for the treatment of certain ailments).

The seeds contained high concentrations of pyrrolizidine alkaloids, identified mainly as the N-oxide of heliotrine (74%), and one or two other compounds similar in character to lasiocarpine.

[17] Taxonomic revision supported through molecular phylogenetics led to the recognition of Euploca as genus separate from Heliotropium.

The age of Heliothamnus suggest that its diversification could have been triggered directly by the uplift of the Andes, something that would have promoted speciation in inner-Andean valleys and the Andean scrub.

[19] Before the main rise of the Andes, Cochranea and Tournefortia coinhabited the Andean region at the same time and significant speciation had not yet occurred.