Hypericum terrae company
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Hypericum terrae in the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve, Cayo District, Belize |
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| Sprague & L. Riley |
Hypericum terrae-firmae is a species of plant fromthe St. John's wort family (Hypericaceae)native to Belize.
description
Hypericum terrae-firmae is a shrub or small tree that reaches a height of between 1 and 2 meters. The orange-brown trunk is upright and branches out regularly, pseudo-dichotomously or laterally, the internodes are four to six millimeters long. The trunk is square in cross section when young, later cylindrical, without corky folds, the bark peels into strips.
The sessile, not fully overgrown with the trunk, unkilled leaves are scattered or almost like roof tiles in four rows and the trunk is useless without prior wilting. The narrowly elongated to narrowly elliptical, flat leaf blade is 16 to 30 millimeters long and 4 to 6 millimeters wide, monochrome, not or only slightly blue-green and paper to slightly leathery, at the outer end it is pointed, at the base it is narrowly wedge-shaped to almost narrowed. They are seven-veined at the base with an almost parallel nerve , the leaf glands are dense and are flush with the leaf surface.
The inflorescences arise pseudo- dichotomously one to two nodes below the terminal flowers, a pedicel is missing or only very short. The star-shaped flowers are 40 to 60 mm in diameter. The narrow, elongated, pointed sepals measure 14 to 22 millimeters in length and 3 to 7 millimeters in width, the 15 leaf veins branch dichotomously and reticulate, the central rib protrudes.
The light yellow, inverted-lanceolate petals are between 20 and 30 millimeters long and 7 to 12 millimeters wide. Of the approximately 250 stamens , the longest are 9 to 11 mm long. The narrow ovoid ovary is between 3 (rare to 2.5) and 4.5 millimeters long and 2 to 2.5 millimeters wide, wherein the five-engaging, down wegbiegenden the extreme end of stylus 5 measure to 7 millimeters. The scar is small. The capsule fruits are 8 to 10 millimeters long and 5 to 7 millimeters wide, broadly ovate and shorter than the sepals. The approximately 1 millimeter long seeds are weak to keeled.
Occurrence
Hypericum terrae-firmae is endemic to the state of Belize and occurs there in the provinces of Cayo and Belize . It grows, often near rivers, in open pine or oak-pine forests or pine savannas on granite at altitudes between 0 and 550 meters.
Systematics
The species was first described in 1924 by Thomas Archibald Sprague and Lawrence Riley . Its status as a separate species has long been questioned by subsequent authors and it was instead synonymous with the Cuban Hypericum styphelioides . Norman Robson contradicted this in 1987 and distinguished them on the basis of the leaf shape (thinner, longer, pointed, broadened at the base) and the large flowers with longer, narrow, oblong sepals.
Within the St. John's herbs, the species is together with Hypericum styphelioides in the Brathys section , Styphelioides subsection .
proof
- ↑ a b c d e f Norman KB Robson: No. 1 Studies in the genus Hypericum L. (Guttiferae) 7. Section 29. Brathys (part 1) in Bulletin of the British Museum, Botany series Vol. 16 1987, British Museum (Natural History) London 1987: online text, pages 18-20. (engl.)
- ^ Paul C. Standley and Louis O. Williams: Flora of Guatemala In: Fieldiana. Botany; v. 24, pt. 7, no.1, Chicago Natural History Museum, 1961, p. 51
- ^ Preston Adams: Studies in the Guttiferae. II. Taxonomic and distributional observations on North American taxa , In: Rhodora vol. 64, 1962, pp. 231-242
- ↑ hypericum.myspecies.info: Nomenclature | Hypericum online , accessed August 16, 2015
