Desfontainia spinosa
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Desfontainia spinosa |
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| Desfontainia spinosa | ||||||||||||
| Ruiz & Pav. |
Desfontainia spinosa is the only species of the Desfontainia plant genus in the species-poor family of Columelliaceae within the flowering plants (Magnoliophyta). She is a neotropical species.
description
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Vegetative characteristics
Desfontainia spinosa grows as an evergreen shrub that reaches heights of about 2 meters. The opposite leaves are simple. Their leaf margins are thorny and so their leaves resemble those of the holly ( Ilex ).
Generative characteristics
The flowers are solitary in the leaf axils. The hermaphrodite flowers are five-fold with a double flower envelope . The five sepals are fused at their base. The five scarlet petals are fused tubular and up to 5 centimeters long. There are five stamens .
The calyx is still clearly visible on the fleshy berry , which is white to yellow when ripe .
The number of chromosomes is 2n = 14.
distribution
The home of Desfontainia spinosa located in Costa Rica and Peru to Chile in the Andes .
History of introduction to Europe
The plant collector William Lobb , who was on the hunt for newly introduced plant species on behalf of Veitch & Sons from 1840 to 1848 in various countries in South America , collected the Desfontainia spinosa at the same time as the Chilean araucaria ( Araucaria araucana ) around 1843/44. A report on it appeared in Curtis's Botanical Magazine 4781 (1854).
Later, around 1925, he was succeeded by the plant collector Harold Frederick Comber , whose father was the chief gardener at Nymans. He introduced a form with vermilion flowers, the Desfontainia spinosa 'Harold Comber'.
Systematics
The genus Desfontainia was established in 1794 by the Spanish botanists Hipólito Ruiz López and José Antonio Pavón y Jiménez . The generic name Desfontainia honors the French doctor and botanist René Louiche Desfontaines (1750 - 1833).
In the past, the genus Desfontainia was placed in the nugget family (Loganiaceae). Some authors put this genus in a separate family Desfontainiaceae Endl. with a single species. Investigations by Bremer et al. 1994, Backlund & Bremer 1997, Bell et al. 2001 show that the previous classification in the system is not valid and so the Columelliaceae family is out of order today.
swell
- The Columelliaceae family on the AP website - Angiosperm Phylogeny website .
- The Desfontainiaceae family with the only Desfontainia at DELTA. (Section description)
- Illustrated description at St. Andrews Botanic Garden in the web archive. ( Memento of February 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ruiz & Pav .: Florae peruvianae et chilensis prodromus… 29, 1794, plate 5.
- ↑ Lotte Burkhardt: Directory of eponymous plant names . Extended Edition. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Free University Berlin Berlin 2018. [1]
