Corsia unguiculata
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Corsia unguiculata is a loose leaf green plant type from the family of Corsiaceae .
features
Like all species of the genus also has Corsia unguiculata the photosynthesis abandoned and therefore forms no chlorophyll more. Instead, it lives myco-heterotrophically on a mycorrhizal fungus that lives in symbiosis with another plant.
Corsia unguiculata is a perennial plant that only grows above ground during flowering. From the short, creeping rhizome sprout two to three, 10 to 18 centimeters long, cylindrical and finely grooved, unbranched and upright stems. The 1.5 to 2.5 cm long foliage is reduced to sheath-shaped scaly leaves and grows alternately along the entire stem. The entire plant is reddish above ground.
The upright single flowers are terminal and stand on flower stalks that are 1 to 4.5 inches long. Five of the six petals (three tepals each in two petal circles ) are thread-like to linear, up to 7 millimeters long and 2 millimeters wide and - similar to a Turkish league - strongly bent back. The top sixth, the so-called labellum , is wine-red, greatly enlarged (1.5 to 3 centimeters long, 1.5 to 2.5 centimeters wide) and broadly ovoid. It initially surrounds the flower bud and, after opening, covers the other flower organs protectively. On approach is to Labellum on an elongated, slightly rounded and dreihöckrigen web of callus tissue on gynostemium grown ( "pinned"), there is a central rib traversed and on each side of four parallel branched nerves.
The gynostemium is 0.5 to 1 millimeter long, the free portion of the stamens reaches lengths between 1 and 1.5 millimeters, the anthers are also 1 to 1.5 millimeters long.
The ovary is 9 to 18 millimeters long, the seed capsule is cylindrical, 2 to 2.5 cm long and 3 millimeters thick.
Distribution area
Corsia unguiculata is native to the north-eastern part of New Guinea in the forests of the Torricelli Mountains at altitudes of 600 to 2700 meters on humus soil.
Systematics
Corsia unguiculata was first described in 1905 by Friedrich Richard Rudolf Schlechter and is the type species of the Unguiculatis section . The main diagnostic feature of the section is the extended web of callus tissue that connects the labellum with the gynostemium, in contrast to the sessilis section , in which the callus tissue is more directly connected to the gynostemium. The epithet also refers to this characteristic , unguiculata (from the Latin unguiculus for fingernail) means something like "claw-shaped at the base".
literature
Much of the information in this article has been obtained from the following sources:
- Karl Schumann, Karl Lauterbach: Supplements to the flora of the German protected areas in the South Seas with the exclusion of Samoa and the Carolines , Leipzig, 1905, p. 74 online version
- P. Van Royen: Sertulum Papuanum 17. Corsiaceae of New Guinea and surrounding areas in: Webbia 27: 223-255, 1972