Aesculus parryi
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Aesculus parryi |
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Aesculus parryi is arepresentative of the horse chestnut ( Aesculus )nativeto Baja California .
features
Aesculus parryi is a shrub or small tree that is 1 to 6 m high and a trunk diameter of up to 20 cm. The bark is gray to almost white and smooth. Branches are light gray and glabrous to slightly hairy. The buds are not resinous.
The leaves are palmate and pinnate and consist of 5 to 7 leaflets, rarely 3 or just one. The petiole is 1 to 10 cm long. The leaflets are slightly leathery, 3 to 12 cm long, 2 to 4 cm wide, obovate to oblong-elliptical. The tip of the leaflet is blunt, broadly pointed or rounded. The leaf base is blunt, the leaf edge is completely to slightly wavy. The underside is light brown hairy to woolly hairy, the upper side is green, glabrous or hairy scattered. The leaflet stalks are 0 to 5 mm long.
The inflorescence is narrowly columnar, 5 to 20 cm long, glabrous or with short hairs. The peduncle is 4 to 6 mm long and hairy. The calyx is bell-shaped, hairy 4 to 9 mm long and glandular. The sepals are only fused together up to half their length, the calyx tips are blunt and almost the same. The crown is creamy white, orange at the base, later reddish brown. The four or five petals are hairy on the surface and on the edge. The upper pair of petals is 9 to 18 mm long, the nail has lobed appendages at the tip and is strongly bent back at this point. The plate is obovate, pointed or blunt. The laterally standing pair of petals is 8 to 11 mm long, upright to slightly splaying and not bent back. The fifth petal is missing or of different sizes. There are 6 to 8 stamens that are 10 to 20 mm long and ascending. The stamens are white and glabrous, the anthers bright orange, glabrous, glandular at the tip and at the base of the loculi (openings). The pistil is 10 to 23 mm long, hairy on the ovary, hairy on the style.
The capsule fruit is obovate to spherical and has a diameter of 2 to 3 cm. The pericarp is thin, hairy and slightly bumpy. The color is light brown. One fruit contains one to three seeds, 1 to 1.5 cm in diameter, which are dark brown to almost black. The umbilicus ( hilum ) is white to slightly sand-colored and has a diameter of 3 to 4 mm.
Distribution and locations
The species occurs only in the northwestern part of Baja California and is geographically isolated from all other horse chestnut species. It grows in different locations from the coast and the dunes near San Quintín , on stony and sandy soils of the open hill country, and along streams up to a height of around 700 m in the Sierra San Pedro Mártir .
ecology
Aesculus parryi flowers between March and July, the fruits ripen between September and February. Most of the time the bushes are bare, the leaves shoot in November and December, the leaves turn yellow and the leaves fall between February and May during the flowering period.
Systematics
Aesculus parryi is the only species of the Parryanae section of the genus Aesculus . It differs from the other species mainly in that the sepals are fused at most up to half. The species was first described by Asa Gray in 1882 . The Parryanae section was established by Wiggins in 1932.
supporting documents
- James W. Hardin: A Revision of the American Hippocastanaceae II . Brittonia, Volume 9, 1957, pp. 173-195.
