Barringtonia asiatica
| Barringtonia asiatica | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Barringtonia asiatica |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Barringtonia asiatica | ||||||||||||
| ( L. ) In short |
.jpg)
.jpg)
Barringtonia asiatica is a type of plant from the potted fruit tree family(Lecythidaceae). It thrives on the shores of the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific . The fruits are often washed up on the beaches as flotsam.
description
Vegetative characteristics
Barringtonia asiatica grows as an evergreen tree and reaches heights of about 5 to 20 meters. The bark is cracked. The tree top is rounded and the thick branches do not branch out often.
The alternate, sedentary, leathery and glossy, entire and simple leaves have a length of 20 to 40 centimeters and a width of 10 to 20 centimeters. They are bare and spirally arranged on the branches and sit heaped like a whorl at the branch ends. The underside lighter leaves are obovate to lanceolate or spatulate, the tip is rounded to rounded or pointed. The veins are often changing, pinnate and lighter to reddish. The young leaves are reddish with red veins. Older leaves turn yellow or develop red spots between the leaf veins. There are tiny stipules present.
Generative characteristics
The mostly terminal, upright, racemose inflorescences are 5 to 15 centimeters long and contain five to ten, rarely up to twenty flowers. The egg-shaped bracts are 8 to 20 millimeters, the triangular bracts 1.5 to 5 millimeters and the flower stalks 5 to 9 centimeters long.
The spherical flower bud with a diameter of 2 to 4 cm is enclosed by the overgrown sepals , which break into two or three irregular parts when the flower unfolds. The fragrant flowers are hermaphrodite and four-fold with a double flower envelope . The green sepals are preserved for a long time, they can still be seen on the ripe fruit, the boat-shaped calyx lobes being 3 to 4 × 2 to 3 cm in size and the calyx tube 3 to 5 mm long. The four ovate to elliptical petals with a length of 5 to 7 centimeters are white. The very numerous (up to 100), up to 10 cm long and free stamens are more noticeable . The likewise white, pink to reddish stamens towards the tip are fused from their base to a length of 1.5 to 6 mm in six groups; the outer stamens are 7 to 9 cm long. The anthers are yellow. Four carpels are a vierkammerigen, 5 mm long to 9, under constant ovary grown. There are four or five ovules per ovary chamber . There is a discus around the base of the stylus . The stylus, which is also white, pink to reddish towards the tip, is 11 to 13 cm longer than the stamens and protrudes from them. The flowers only open for one night and are pollinated by moths and bats .
The mostly solitary, smooth, 9 to 11 cm long and four to five-edged, ribbed, to-winged fruits are shaped like a pyramid, with the bird-beaked sepals and the style at the tip of the fruit. The fruits turn from green to brown as they ripen. The pericarp is spongy and fibrous, so that the light fruits float in the water ( hydrochory ). They remain viable even after several months in salt water, so that this species has a wide distribution on the coasts from East Africa to the Pacific . The seedling appears at the "fruit tip"; the hard fruit skin remains at the base of the trunk for a while. The elongated seed is 4 to 5 cm long.
Barringtonia asiatica flowers and fruit most of the year.
The number of chromosomes is 2n = 26.
distribution
Due to the floating fruits, Barringtonia asiatica is widespread, from tropical East Africa and Madagascar to India , Southeast Asia to the Philippines , and in the south to Queensland . The tree can now also be found in the Caribbean through planting .
Barringtonia asiatica colonizes habitats near the beach, but a little further inland than the mangroves . This type is socialized z. B. with Calophyllum inophyllum and linden-leaved marshmallow .
use
The fruits contain saponins , which are particularly toxic to fish . They were traditionally used for fishing. Different parts of plants are also part of traditional medicines. Today the most common use is as an undemanding avenue tree in the tropics.
Botanical history and naming
The epithet asiatica , ie “Asian”, does not make much sense if one considers that the other 50 or so species of the genus Barringtonia are also common in Asia. Carl von Linné published this species in 1753, however, as Mammea asiatica and with this name distinguished it from the only other Mammea species known at the time , Mammea americana .
The following entry can be found in Georg Forster's "Voyage of Discovery to Tahiti and the South Seas 1772–1775" :
"Now we hiked over One-Tree-Hill with our companion and came to one of the front valleys of O-Parre. Here we were lucky, and we made a botanical discovery. We found a tree that looked most splendid It had a multitude of beautiful flowers as white as lilies, but larger and with a multitude of stamens the color of crimson at the tips, so many of which had fallen off that the whole floor We called this beautiful tree Barringtonia, but in the local language it is called Huddu, and the inhabitants assured us that the nutty fruit, if crushed and thrown into the sea with the flesh of mussels, would keep the fish for a while numb, so that they come to the surface and let themselves be caught in your hands.We were far too pleased with our botanical findings to continue investigating until our return Ship could have waited. "
In 1875 this species was classified by Sulpiz Kurz in the genus Barringtonia . Further synonyms are: Agasta indica Miers , Barringtonia speciosa J.R. Forster & G. Forster .
swell
- Haining Qin & Sir Ghillean (Iain) T. Prance: Lecythidaceae in the Flora of China . Barringtonia asiatica - online (section description).
- Ria Tan: Barringtonia asiatica in Mangrove and wetland wildlife at Sungei Buloh Wetlands Reserve , 2001 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Carl von Linné: Species Plantarum , Volume 1, 1753, pp. 512-513. scanned at botanicus.org.
- ↑ Georg Forster: Voyage of discovery to Tahiti and the South Seas 1772-1775 - Chapter 11 on the pages of Project Gutenberg , accessed on August 14, 2020.
- ↑ WS Kurz: Preliminary Report on the Forest and other Vegetation of Pegu. 1875, app. A: 65, app. B: 52, in sched.
