Couroupita
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Cannonball Tree ( Couroupita guianensis ), blossoms |
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| Aubl. |
Couroupita is a genus of plants within the order of the heather-like . Only three tree species from Central and South America are assigned to this genus.
description
Couroupita are trees of the canopy layer of medium to huge size. The leaves are in whorls from 7 to 40 at the tips of the branches. They are 8 to 30 cm long and mostly hairy along the armpits of the secondary veins.
The inflorescences are stem-flowered or rarely stem-flowered on the oldest branches. They are grapes or irregularly single-branched, cluster-like arrangements of grapes, the growth of the inflorescence axis is not limited. The flowers are zygomorphic , they consist of six sepals and six petals , a stamen cap is missing (in Couroupita nicaraguarensis ) or is flat, the staminodes form anthers . The ovary is sechskammerig and contains a large number of ovules that at a bilobed placenta are arranged along the entire length of the chamber.
The fruits do not pop up and fall from the tree when ripe. They are more or less spherical, the pericarp is brittle and often shatters when the fruit hits the ground. The fruits contain a multitude of seeds , these are 10 to 15 mm long, the surface is hairy, the cotyledons of the embryo are already leaf-like and are opposite. The seeds are surrounded by a pulp that turns bluish-green in color when exposed to air. If the pulp dries up, it breaks up into six parts, which are crescent-shaped in longitudinal section and wedge-shaped in cross-section.
Occurrence and locations
The genus comes in Central America from El Salvador to eastern Panama and in South America from the Amazon to Guyana . The plants grow in low-lying rainforests on moist soils.
Systematics
The type species of the genus is Couroupita guianensis . Only three types are distinguished in the genus:
- Cannonball tree ( Couroupita guianensis Aubl. )
- Couroupita nicaraguarensis DC. : It occurs from El Salvador to Ecuador.
- Couroupita subsessilis Pilg. : It occurs in northern Brazil and northern Peru.
literature
- LI Nevling: Flora of Panama (Lecythidaceae) . In: Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden , Volume 45, Number 2, May 1958.
- Couroupita from the Lecythidaceae Pages of the New York Botanical Garden , accessed April 28, 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Rafaël Govaerts (ed.): Couroupita. In: World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP) - The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . Retrieved September 27, 2017.
