Tuberose

Tuberose
Tuberose ( Agave polianthes )
Systematics
Order : Asparagales (Asparagales) Family : Asparagaceae (Asparagaceae) Subfamily : Agave family (Agavoideae) Genre : Agaves ( agave ) Subgenus : Manfreda Type : Tuberose
Scientific name
Agave polianthes
Thiede & Eggli

The tuberose ( Agave polianthes ), Spanish: "nardo", "amole", "tuberosa" or "vara de San José " (Joseph's stick), is a species of plant from the genus of agaves ( agave ) in the subfamily of the agave family (Agavoideae) . The specific epithet polianthes is derived from the Greek words polios for 'gray', 'whitish' and anthos for 'blossom', but also from polion , a strongly scented mint and refers to the whitish and strongly scented flowers of the species.

description

Agave polianthes grows as a basal rosette with six to ten leaves that arise from an onion-like base. Their roots are fleshy. The soft, linear, bright green leaves, sometimes reddish near the base, occasionally have brown spots on the underside. They are 30 to 60 inches long and 1 to 1.5 inches wide.

The annual inflorescence is 60 to 100 centimeters high. In the upper 20 centimeters (or more) the paired flowers sit on 20 or more nodes . The fragrant flowers are usually sessile and 25 to 40 millimeters long. Their tepals are waxy white. The flower tube is regularly bent outwards from below the center, funnel-shaped above the bend and has a diameter of 7 to 8 millimeters at the oblique mouth. The almost identical, elliptical-egg-shaped petals are bluntly pointed and usually 15 to 18 millimeters long and 7 to 10 millimeters wide. The stamens and stylus do not protrude.

Systematics and distribution

Agave polianthes is only known from culture. She's probably from Mexico .

Carl von Linné made his description as Polianthes tuberosa in Species Plantarum on the basis of plants cultivated in India . Joachim Thiede and Urs Eggli placed the species as Agave tuberosa in the genus of agaves in 1999, but overlooked the older name Agave tuberosa Mill. , Which forms the basionym for today's species Furcraea tuberosa . In 2001, Thiede and Eggli proposed Agave polianthes as a new name.

The species belongs to the subgenus Manfreda and is assigned to the Polianthes group there.

use

Flowers (cultivated form)

The tuberose is cultivated in large quantities for the cut flower market, with mainly double varieties being marketed. Furthermore, the oil of the not yet blooming tuberose is used as a fragrance component of perfume .

Botanical history

The tuberose has been known in Europe since at least 1601. A first illustration of the plant can be found in Charles de l'Écluse's work Rariorum plantarum historia .

proof

literature

• Joachim Thiede: Agave polianthes . In: Urs Eggli (Hrsg.): Succulent lexicon. Monocotyledons . Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-8001-3662-7 , pp. 56 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Urs Eggli, Leonard E. Newton: Etymological Dictionary of Succulent Plant Names . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-642-05597-3 , p. 188.
2. ↑ Species Plantarum . Volume 1, p. 316.
3. ↑ Joachim Thiede, Urs Eggli: Inclusion of Manfreda Salisbury and Polianthes Linné in Agave Linné (Agavaceae): further renaming . In: Cacti and other succulents . Volume 52, Number 6, 2001, pp. 166–167 (online) ( Memento of the original from February 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
4. ↑ Why the tuberose for the new Bulgari fragrance is only picked in the evening nzz.ch, from January 31, 2020

Web links

Commons : Agave polianthes  - collection of images