Acoelorrhaphe wrightii
| Acoelorrhaphe wrightii | ||||||||||||
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Acoelorrhaphe wrightii |
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Acoelorrhaphs | ||||||||||||
| H. Wendl. | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Acoelorrhaphe wrightii | ||||||||||||
| ( Griseb. & H. Wendl. ) H. Wendl. ex Becc. |
Acoelorrhaphe wrightii is a species of American palm . It is the only species in the genus Acoelorrhaphe . It is widely used as an ornamental plant.
features
Acoelorrhaphe wrightii is a moderately large, bush-shaped, armored fan palm . It is hermaphroditic and blooms several times. The trunk is slender, upright and covered with the perennial leaf sheaths and bases of the petioles. Older trunks are bare in the lower area. The internodes are very short.
The chromosome number is 2n = 36.
leaves
The leaves are rather small, induplicate folded and very short costapalmat . The leaf sheath breaks down into an interwoven mass of coarse brown fibers. The petiole is moderately long, slightly furrowed or flat on the top, rounded on the underside. It is strongly covered with strong, triangular, back or inwardly curved spines. The adaxial hastula is clearly developed and irregularly lobed; the abaxial hastula is just a low ridge.
The leaf blade is approximately circular, rather flat, and regularly divided up to the middle into narrow, simply folded, stiff segments, the tip of which is deeply two-parted (bifid). The upper side of the leaf is usually silver, due to small scales. The central ribs are clearly protruding on the underside.
Inflorescences
The inflorescences are slender, stand individually between the leaves (interfoliar) and are longer than the leaves. They are branched up to four times. The inflorescence stalk is slender, long, elliptical in cross section, and usually upright. The cover sheet is short, partly or completely enclosed by the leaf sheaths, tubular, two-keeled at the sides, and tears open apically and results in short, irregular lobes. The two bracts on the peduncle resemble the cover sheet, but are much longer and shallower keeled. The inflorescence axis is about the same length as the stem, rather glabrous, and completely covered by the sheaths of the tubular bracts. The other axes are densely hairy. The bracts on the peduncle resemble those on the stem, but are smaller and get smaller and smaller towards the tip of the inflorescence. The side axes of the first order have a two-keeled, membranous preceding sheet, which is more or less enclosed in the first bract. The following bracts are very inconspicuous, triangular and membranous. The flower-bearing axes (rachillae) are slender and have small bracts in a spiral arrangement, each of which has a small spur in the axilla on which a group ( coil ) of two to three flowers stands. Each flower is in turn in the axilla of a narrow, thin bract.
blossoms
The flowers are hermaphrodite and cream-colored. The three sepals are fleshy and slightly fused at the base. The three petals are fused to a corolla tube over a quarter of the length. The six stamens are at the mouth of the corolla tube. The filaments have grown together at the base to form a flat cup, the free parts are abruptly narrowed to a thread-like tip. In the bud they are not bent inwards. The anthers are dorsifix, short, rounded, agile to flower and latrors. The gynoeceum consists of three bald carpels that are only fused in the stylus region . The ovule is basal, upright and anatropic. The pollen is ellipsoidal with a slight to pronounced asymmetry. The germ opening is a distal sulcus.
Fruits and seeds
The fruit is small, rounded and develops from just one carpel. It is black and has the scar of the scar at the tip and the undeveloped carpels at the base. The exocarp is smooth, the mesocarp is thin and fleshy with longitudinal fibers. The endocarp is crust-shaped. The seed has a basal umbilicus (hilum), the endosperm is homogeneous, but is pressed in on one side by the seed coat.
Distribution and locations
Acoeloraphe wrightii is found in southern Florida, the West Indies, and Central America along parts of the Caribbean coast. It grows in brackish swamps and forms dense stands here.
Systematics
The genus Acoelorrhaphe is placed within the family Arecaceae in the subfamily Coryphoideae , tribe Trachycarpeae , but not assigned to any subtribe ( incertae sedis ).
In the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, only the species Acoelorrhaphe wrightii is recognized.
Acoelorrhaphe was first described by Hermann Wendland in 1879 , the type species is Acoelorrhaphe wrightii . Basionym for the species is Copernicia wrightii Griseb. & H. Wendl. The generic name consists of the ancient Greek words or parts of the word A = without , coelos = hollow and raphe = seam , and refers to the fact that the seed does not have an indented raphe, as is typical for many representatives of the Coryphoideae.
The species epithet honors the American botanist Charles Wright .
Synonyms for the generic name are Paurotis O.F. Cook and Acanthosabal Prosch.
supporting documents
- John Dransfield, Natalie W. Uhl, Conny B. Asmussen, William J. Baker, Madeline M. Harley, Carl E. Lewis: Genera Palmarum. The Evolution and Classification of Palms . Second edition, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008, ISBN 978-1-84246-182-2 , pp. 272-274.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rafaël Govaerts (Ed.): Acoelorrhaphe. In: World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP) - The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . Retrieved July 26, 2012.
- ^ Acoelorrhaphe wrightii in the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families , accessed July 26, 2012.
- ^ Robert Lee Riffle, Paul Craft: An Encyclopedia of Cultivated Palms . Timber Press, Portland 2007, ISBN 978-0-88192-558-6 , p. 241.
