Manchinelbaum

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Manchinelbaum
Fruit and leaves

Fruit and leaves

Systematics
Rosids
Eurosiden I
Order : Malpighiales (Malpighiales)
Family : Spurge Family (Euphorbiaceae)
Genre : Hippomaniac
Type : Manchinelbaum
Scientific name
Hippomaniac mancinella
L.
Mancanilla tree

The manchineel even Manzanillobaum or beach apple , ( Hippomane mancinella ) is a plant from the family of the spurge family (Euphorbiaceae). It is found in Florida in the United States , the Bahamas , the Caribbean , Central America, and northern South America . It was also introduced in West Africa and the Galápagos Islands . The name "Manchinel" (also "manchioneel") comes from the Spanish manzanilla ( "little apple") , from the superficial similarity of its fruits and leaves to those of an apple tree . The current Spanish name is Manzanilla de la muerte ("Apple of Death"). This refers to the fact that the Manchinel tree is one of the most poisonous trees in the world.

The Manchinel tree grows on the coast near the beach, on sandy, stony soils. It offers excellent natural wind protection. Its roots stabilize the sand and thus prevent the beach from eroding. It also tolerates salty water and is resistant to wind and drought.

It is sometimes confused with Ximenia americana , which is also found on the coast and bears similar, edible fruits, but has completely different flowers.

description

Vegetative characteristics

The Manchinel tree is a semi- evergreen , monoecious tree with gray to brownish bark, which becomes rougher and cracked when old, and can reach heights of up to 15 meters. It has a richly branched and spreading crown. It bears simple, alternate and long-stalked, whole-margined to finely notched, sawn, rounded, round-pointed to pointed and dark green, up to 10 centimeters long and up to 6 centimeters wide, elliptical to egg-shaped, leathery, sometimes shiny leaves. The middle vein and sometimes the pinnate nerve as well as the leaf margin are light green-yellowish. The leaf base is rounded to slightly heart-shaped. At the upper end of the petioles, at the base of the leaves, there is sometimes a rounded gland. There are small, pointed and sloping stipules .

Generative characteristics

Terminal, racemose, spiked, 5 to 12 centimeters long inflorescences with fleshy, thick rachis, with small greenish-yellow flowers are formed. The male, minimally stalked flowers with two to three-lobed calyx have two to three fused stamens . The larger, sessile female flowers, with mostly small bracts , have a three-part calyx that surrounds the upper, multi-chambered (3–9) ovary with several reddish, recurved stigmas , with short, mostly free styluses . The petals are missing in the flowers, in the inflorescences there are one to a few female flowers, surrounded by male flowers, below and the many male, in distant groups in a common bract, above. The flower groups each have large, brownish glands on the outside. The flowers appear before the leaves (hysterantically).

The fragrant, roundish, 2–4 cm large, multi-seeded and smooth stone fruits are similar in appearance to a small apple and greenish-yellow to yellowish when they are ripe. The mesocarp is fleshy and whitish. The taste of the fruit is sweet at first and then very quickly burning hot. The flattened and elliptical, brownish seeds, in the large and hard light brownish stone core, are about 4 millimeters in size. The rounded and porous stone core, sometimes studded or ribbed, is buoyant and is used for hydrochory .

The tree contains a caustic milky sap in all parts . The milky sap is very similar to that of Excoecaria agallocha , the milk mangrove , another milkweed plant.

The tree contains 12-deoxy-5-hydroxyphorbol-6-gamma-7-alpha-oxide, hippomanin , mancinellin , phorbol , the leaves the sapogenin phloracetophenone-2,4-dimethylether, as well as various polyphenols, while the fruits contain physostigmine . The latex contains diterpene ester.

The number of chromosomes is 2n = 22.

Systematics

Synonyms for Hippomane L. are Mancanilla Mill. And Mancinella Tussac . The genus Hippomane belongs to the subtribe Hippomaninae from the tribe Hippomaneae in the subfamily Euphorbioideae within the family of Euphorbiaceae .

The genus Hippomane contains three valid species:

  • Hippomane horrida Urb. & Ekman ; only found in the Dominican Republic , the tree is much smaller, with prickly leaves.
  • Hippomane mancinella L. (Syn .: Hippomane dioica Rottb. , Mancinella venenata Tussac )
  • Hippomane spinosa L .; only in southwestern Hispaniola , the tree is much smaller with indented and prickly leaves.

The genus name Hippomane was given by Linnaeus because he read that a plant caused horses to perish after they had eaten the leaves. Hippo for horse and mane from mania for madness.

Toxicity

Skin irritation after contact with components of the manchinel tree

The tree contains strong toxins . When it rains, milky sap is secreted from the leaves, which, if you stand under the tree during this time, can lead to blistering on the skin and eye irritation. The wood and leaves emit irritating gases when burned. Burning the tree can cause temporary blindness if the smoke gets into the eyes. The fruits can be fatal if consumed. Many trees have a warning sign or are marked with a red "X" on the trunk. The good quality wood can be used; before the trees are felled, the bark should be charred or curled .

According to Kosteletzky, the antidote is the juice of the Tabebuia heterophylla (Syn .: Bignonia leucoxylon L.) which often grows nearby . The roots (arrowroot meal) of Maranta arundinacea are also considered a good antidote. Drinking sea ​​water and washing with it should also help. The juice is used in its homeland against syphilitic growths, the leaf against paralysis, psoriasis , the fruit as a diuretic ( Dragendorff's The Medicinal Plants of Different Peoples and Times ).

Some Galápagos giant tortoises eat the leaves and certain iguanas ( green iguana , common black iguana ) and bats eat the fruit, thus contributing to the spread of seeds . Some birds can also eat the fruits, fallen fruits are also eaten by hermit crabs and possibly various land crabs .

Species protection

The manchinel tree is listed as an endangered species in Florida.

history

Columbus already became acquainted with the poisonous fruits on his second journey in 1493. Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1526) described how mainland Caribs used the sap of the tree to poison their arrows and how they tied prisoners to the tree trunk to bring them to a slow and painful death. A Maranta envelope ( Maranta arundinacea ) was used by the Arawak and Taíno as an antidote for arrow poison .

For Europeans the manchineel was notorious quickly. He has been mentioned by various writers. J.-P. Richter 1802 in Titan (Volume 3, 20, Jobel period 87) or Melville 1849 in Mardi and a trip there (Chapter 107). The heroine of Giacomo Meyerbeer's posthumous opera L'Africaine , premiered in 1865, seeks suicide by lying under a manchinel tree and inhaling the plant fumes. In the film Swamp Under the Feet of Budd Schulberg and Nicholas Ray (1958), a notorious poacher ties a victim to the trunk of a manchinel tree in the Everglades . The man screams as the tree sap burns his skin. He is dead the next morning, his face shows a twisted grimace.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lothar Staeck: Extraordinary flower world of the tropics. Volume 2, BoD, 2016, ISBN 978-3-74311-783-9 , p. 70.
  2. ↑ a b c Rafaël Govaerts (Ed.): Hippomane. In: World Checklist of Selected Plant Families (WCSP) - The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew . Retrieved April 21, 2020.
  3. ↑ Hippomane mancinella . In: Germplasm Resources Information Network . United States Department of Agriculture . Retrieved January 27, 2009.
  4. ↑ MM Grandtner, Julien Chevrette: Dictionary of Trees. Volume 2: South America , Academic Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-12-396490-8 , p. 304.
  5. ^ Charles Sprague Sargent: Manual of the Trees of North America (exclusive of Mexico). Vol. II, Second Corr. Edition, Dover Pub., 1965, ISBN 0-486-20278-X (Reprint), pp. 653 f.
  6. ^ Conley K. McMullen, Ghillean Prance: Flowering Plants of the Galapagos. , Cornell University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-8014-8621-0 , p. 79.
  7. ↑ Cheryll Williams: Medicinal Plants in Australia. Volume 3, Rosenberg Pub., 2012, ISBN 978-1-921719-16-5 , p. 22 ff.
  8. ↑ Hippomane mancinella. ( Memento of January 9, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), In: Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases , United States Department of Agriculture
  9. ^ Hager's Handbook.
  10. ^ Grady L. Webster: The Genera of Euphorbiaceae in the Southeasten United States. In: Journal of the Arnold Arboretum . Vol. 48, No. 4, 1967, pp. 363-430.
  11. ↑ Hippomaniac . In: Germplasm Resources Information Network . United States Department of Agriculture . Retrieved January 27, 2009.
  12. ^ T. Kent Kirk: Tropical Trees of Florida and the Virgin Islands. Pineapple Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-56164-445-2 , pp. 70 f.
  13. ↑ Stephan Endlicher : The Medicinal Plants of the Austrian Pharmacopoeia. Gerold, 1842, p. 81.
  14. ↑ Georg August Richter : Comprehensive Medicine. Second volume, Rücker, 1826, p. 826.
  15. ^ Gerhard Madaus : Textbook of biological remedies. Volume II, Olms, Hildesheim / New York 1976, ISBN 3-487-05891-X , pp. 1831-1834 (reprint of the Leipzig 1938 edition) ( online ).
  16. ^ Brian Groombridge, Lissie Wright: The IUCN Amphibia-reptilia Red Data Book. , Part 1, IUCN, 1982, ISBN 2-88032-601-X , p. 67.
  17. ^ L. van der Pijl : Principles of Dispersal in Higher Plants. Third Rev. Edition, Springer, 1982, ISBN 978-3-642-87927-2 (Reprint), p. 97.
  18. ^ Sue Fox: Hermit Crabs. Barron's, 2000, ISBN 0-7641-1229-5 , p. 41.
  19. ^ Georges Cuvier : The Animal Kingdom. Vol. 13, Carvill, 1833, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2012, ISBN 978-1-108-04966-5 (Reprint), p. 289.
  20. ↑ Hippomane mancinella . In: Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants . Plantatlas.org. Retrieved January 23, 2009.
  21. ↑ Heather Arndt Anderson: Chillies: A Global History. Reaction Books, 2016, ISBN 978-1-78023-682-7 , chapter 3.
  22. ↑ Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo: Historia General de Las Indias. Vol. 1, Juan Cromberger Sevilla 1535.
  23. ^ David E. Jones : Poison Arrows: North American Indian Hunting and Warfare . University of Texas Press , 2007, ISBN 978-0-292-71428-1 , pp. 29 (English).
  24. ↑ Michael Grunwald: The Swamp . Simon & Schuster , 2007, ISBN 978-0-7432-5107-5 , Chapter 2: The Intruders, pp. 25 (English).

Web links

Commons : Manchinelbaum ( Hippomane mancinella )  - album with pictures, videos and audio files