Caryodaphnopsis

Caryodaphnopsis
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Magnoliids
Order:	Laurales
Family:	Lauraceae
Genus:	Caryodaphnopsis Airy Shaw
Species
See text.

Caryodaphnopsis is a genus 15 species belonging to the family Lauraceae in flowering plants. It is distributed in tropical areas in Southern North America, North and Amazon basin of South America, Asia to Southeast Asia following the Pacific ocean islands.

Overview

They are from tall trees to 50 m. heigh to small trees 1.7m high or shrubs in Lowland Evergreen Forest, Rainforest, and Evergreen forest in tropical Asia and America. Caryodaphnopsis is a tropical genus amphi-Pacific distributed, which has a marked geographical disjunction. This occurs between Southeast Asia: South China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia and the Philippines, and tropical America from Costa Rica to Brazil, crossing Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

The genus was described by Herbert Kenneth Airy Shaw and published in Bulletin of Miscellaneous InformationKew 1940 (2): 75in 1940. The type species is Caryodaphnopsis tonkinensis (Lecomte) Airy Shaw. With the discovery of a species of Trigonobalanus (currently Colombobalanus) belonging to the Fagaceae family in Colombia, a genus previously reported only for Asia and presenting a clear example of amphi-Pacific disjunction, Van der Hammen and Cleef (1983) concluded that taxa with this type of distribution, in the past had a much wider distribution in the northern hemisphere during the warm Tertiary and were subsequently forced to migrate to the south due to the widespread of cold climate during late Tertiary and the glacial periods.

Ecology

The fruits are rich in lipids and nitrogen and are dispersed by birds and mammals. Most relatively small fruit species, are of great environmental importance due to be the food of various endemic birds and mammals, especially in Cloud forest and tropical montane forests.

Characteristics

The genus Caryodaphnopsis is characterized in the family Lauraceae by foliage with scent of essential oils produced in oil cells, which can be pleasant or foul, without stipules. The leaves are opposite and lauroid, trinerved usually, that is an exceptional character in the family lauraceae. Rarely tle leaves are penninerved. The flowers are in inflorescences trimers, and are bisexual with six tepals markedly unequal, the outer being much smaller than the internal. Additionally, most species have anthers.

Most species in Caryodaphnopsis genus are having 2 or 4 locelos in the anthers. The pollen sacs arranged in an arc, nine fertile stamens, rarely six, the third whorl with glands, filaments longer or shorter than the anthers, the fourth whorl staminodes conspicuous, from cordate to sagittate. It also presents a very small and flat receptacle, pedicel not enlarged and tepals deciduous or sub-persistents.

Some features of this genus as anthers of 4 cores, nine fertile stamens and leaves trinerved, distinguish this genus Caryodaphnopsis in the family Lauraceae, because most genus have two anther locules, six stamens and leaves fertile penninerved. Additionally, Caryodaphnopsis has a unique anatomical structure of wood in the family Lauraceae. However, it has been stressed in the opposite leaves, tepals unequal, the unique structure of wood, diagnostic characters at generic level, which determine the monophyly of Caryodaphnopsis within the family Lauraceae.

Taxonomic History

This genus, originally reported for Asia, was described by Airy Shaw in 1940, who created the genus name due to similarities between the leaves of this with the leaves of some species of Cryptocarya (=Caryodaphne). In the case of the species Caryodaphnopsis tonkinensis and Caryodaphnopsis baviensis were originally described by Lecomte in 1913, under the genus Notaphoebe, until 1940 when A. Shaw included them in Caryodaphnopsis, and ratified them by Kostermans within this genus in 1964, after having gone through other genus. Genera were then added to the species Caryodaphnopsis latifolia and C. laotica by Wang and A. Shaw in 1957 and 1960 respectively. In 1952 the genus Caryodaphnopsis was placed under the genus Persea, along with genus Nothaphoebe and Alseodaphne due to the close relationship that exists between them. However, the differences found between genus were strong enough to be defined Caryodaphnopsis as a separate genus in 1974 by Kostermans. Kostermans included in his monograph of the genus seven species whose distribution range was from Yunnan to Borneo and the Philippines, in 1974. Until 1985 the genus was only reported for tropical Asia, but van der Werff and Richter, transferred two South American species of the genus Persea to Caryodaphnopsis. This transfer of genus was because of evidence that supported the presence of the species Persea, (Persea inaequalis P. theobromifolia) on Caryodaphnopsis genus, as they differed from other species of the genus Persea in morphology (foliar and floral) and structure of Wood, these being more consistent with genus Caryodaphnopsis.

Species

It contains the following species (but this list may be incomplete):

• Caryodaphnopsis baviensis (Lecomte) Airy Shaw
• Caryodaphnopsis bilocellata van der Werff & Dao
• Caryodaphnopsis burgeri N.Zamora & Poveda
• Caryodaphnopsis cogolloi van der Werff
• Caryodaphnopsis fieldii Aymard & G.A.Romero
• Caryodaphnopsis fosteri van der Werff
• Caryodaphnopsis henryi Airy Shaw
• Caryodaphnopsis inaequalis (A.C.Sm.) van der Werff & H.G.Richt.
• Caryodaphnopsis laotica Airy Shaw
• Caryodaphnopsis latifolia W.T.Wang
• Caryodaphnopsis metallica Kosterm.
• Caryodaphnopsis poilanei Kosterm.
• Caryodaphnopsis theobromifolia (A.H.Gentry) van der Werff & H.G. Richt.
• Caryodaphnopsis tomentosa van der Werff
• Caryodaphnopsis tonkinensis (Lecomte) Airy Shaw