Tiputinia foetida
| Tiputinia foetida | ||||||||||||
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Tiputinia foetida |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Tiputinia | ||||||||||||
| PEBerry & CLWoodw. | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the species | ||||||||||||
| Tiputinia foetida | ||||||||||||
| PEBerry & CLWoodw. |
Tiputinia foetida is a species from the Thismiaceae familyand the only member of its genus. The leaf-green, mycoheterotrophic plant is only known from a single collection from Ecuador in 2005 and was first described in 2007.
description
Tiputinia foetida lives - like all mykoheterotrophic plants - most of its life underground and only appears just above the surface of the earth when it blooms.
The vertically growing, weakly branched main root is cylindrical, 6.5 centimeters long and has a cross section of around 4 millimeters. The flower stalks grow from its upper end, the only known specimen had two of them, whereby the second was not in flower at the same time as the first.
The flowers stand upright as terminal single flowers on the above-ground 2 centimeter long flower stems, which above and below ground are covered in a spiral arrangement with leaves and bracts attached to the stem and a length of 3 to 10 millimeters and a width of 1 to 2.5 Reach millimeters.
The diameter of the actinomorphic flowers is 4.5 to 5 centimeters measured above the petal tips. The six olive-green, translucent bracts are around 1.9 millimeters long, 3 to 4 millimeters long and attach to the upper end of the throat of the longitudinally inverted conical, transversely hexagonal and 8 to 9 millimeters deep flower tube and lie with their tapered outer end on the Ground up. The six the bloom cladding oppositely arranged, fully orange stamens have first angled slightly upright about the flower tube and then bend approximately 90 ° downwards, in the flower tube pointing from. The stamens are triangular, thickened at the base and 4 to 5 millimeters long and taper towards the outer end. In their central part, four to six pairs of hair-like or thread-like appendages go from them laterally, which are 1 to 2 millimeters long and which shorten with increasing distance from the base. The fixed to the approach dust bag are narrow elliptical, 1.2 millimeters long and 0.5 millimeters wide. The stylus is cylindrical and 1.5 to 2 millimeters high, the stigma is 2.5 millimeters high, triangular and broadly pyramidal. There are numerous vertically elongated elevations on the inside of the flower tube. The ovary is flattened ovoid, unicompartmental and 4 millimeters high. The shape of the fruit is not known.
ecology
Due to the nature of the flower, a flowering period of several days is assumed. When the flower opens, the flower begins to give off a strongly putrid odor of “rotting fish” ( “a foul, rotten fish-like odor” ), a unique feature among the otherwise non-scented species of Thismiaceae. For several hours it could be observed that the smell was highly attractive to numerous insects, including flies, beetles, ants and small wasps. Pollination was not observed. It is assumed that the plants are sapromyophilic , that is, they attract pollinators via their smell and that they pretend to be present carrion to lay their eggs in the flower tube. In order to leave the flower tube, the pollinators then have to brush the anthers, whereby they ingest pollen.
This type of pollination is a typical feature of rare or rarely flowering plants.
distribution
The species has only been found once in the province of Orellana in eastern Ecuador . There it bloomed on the grounds of a biological research station ( Tiputini Biodiversity Station ) "on the edge of a path from the laboratory to the canteen" ( "off trail between laboratory and dining hall" ) in the shady undergrowth of the evergreen rainforest under leaves in the immediate vicinity of a tree of the species Rinorea at 210 m altitude. Estimates assume an average of around 3000 millimeters of precipitation per year for the place, particularly strong in March and April, but exact figures do not exist. Several searches in the area for more specimens of the species in April and August of that year were unsuccessful.
Systematics
After extensive investigations, the find could be assigned to the Thismiaceae family. It was not assigned to the only New World genus Thismia , however, due to some flower morphological features that differ from the Thismia and bring them closer to the African Thismiaceae. Because of this, it was set up as a separate genus, but it is assumed, among other things, due to the New World distribution that Tiputinia is a sister of Thismia . In particular, the pyramidal stigma brings it closer to the Pyramidalis section of the Ophiomeris subgenus of Thismia . Due to other morphological similarities, however, the African genus Oxygyne is also being considered as a closest relative, information is expected from possible molecular genetic and palynological studies, but this requires further findings of the species.
The species was created in 2007 by Catherine L. Woodward and Paul. E. Berry first described, the generic name refers to the place of discovery in the Tiputini Biodiversity Station , the species epithet to the extreme smell of the flower.
proof
- Catherine L. Woodward, Paul. E. Berry, Hiltje Maas-van de Kamer, Kelly Swing: Tiputinia foetida, a new mycoheterotrophic genus of Thismiaceae from Amazonian Ecuador, and a likely case of deceit pollination , in: Taxon, 56: 1, 2007, pp. 157-162 .