Krameria cistoidea Hook. & Arn.

  • Authority

    Simpson, Beryl B. 1989. Krameriaceae. Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 49: 1-108. (Published by NYBG Press)

  • Family

    Krameriaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Krameria cistoidea Hook. & Arn.

  • Type

    Type. Chile. Coquimbo,  Beechey, without collector or number (lectotype, K). I have designated a fragment at Kew as the type because it is the only specimen from Beechey s voyage that I have been able to locate. Stafleu and Cowan (1979) indicated that, according to A. Gray, the Beechey voyage plants were originally at Glasgow then sent to Edinburgh, but I found neither of these herbaria had specimens referable to this species, and the Honorary Curator of Glasgow wrote (in litt.) that Hooker s plants are at Kew. The specific epithet is presumable taken from the Greek cyst (cist),  bladder, and oides,  resembling, referring to the round, bladder-like shape of the fruit.

  • Description

    Species Description - Erect, rounded, much branched, woody shrubs 0.5-1.5 m tall; young stems greenish-yellow, slightly strigose to densely tomentose; old branches dark yellow-green with fissured bark. Leaves simple, broadly lanceolate to oblanceolate, 6-18 mm long, 3-10 mm wide, decreasing in size distally, obtuse, mucronate with a dark red apicule, narrowly cuneate at the base, or sometimes narrowing into a petiole less than 1 mm long, variably villous, sometimes canescent or sericeous, the indumentum tending to render the young tissues a golden color. Flowers produced in branched racemes with villous to sericeous rachises; flowering stalks 11-22 mm long with the peduncle and pedicel separated in the distal half by a pair of mucronate leafy bractlets 6-11 mm long and about 1.5 mm wide; entire flowering stalk shed if a flower aborts; buds slightly falcate in outline; sepals five, spreading, ovate, acute, with entire, often scarious margins, rose, villous or sericeous on the dorsal faces; uppermost sepal 9-13 mm long, 3.0-5.5 mm wide; lowermost sepal 9-13 mm long, (2-)4-6 mm wide, often gibbous; lateral sepals narrower than the upper and lower sepals; glandular petals cuneate, 3 mm long, 2 mm wide, light to medium pink, covered on the dorsal faces with irregular, roundish blisters, appearing bullate; petaloid petals three, clawed to narrowly oblanceolate in outline, ca. 6 mm long, 1.5-2.0 mm wide, pink distally with the expanded tips and bases green or cream-colored; stamens four, didynamous, pink, with the shorter pair 4-7 mm long and the longer pair 7-9 mm long; pollen 26-29 µm in diam., tricolporate; ovary ovoid, ca. 5 mm long, green, covered with dense white trichomes; style curved upward, pink, ca. 5 mm long. Fruit globose, 8-10 mm in diam. excluding spines, green, sparsely strigose and bearing retrorsely barbed spines scattered over the entire surface; spines 3-5 mm long, 0.15-0.2 mm in basal diam., deep red or orange in color, bearing unicellular scattered trichomes along the basal portion and amber-colored retrorse barbs each up to 1 mm long in a subterminal ring and scattered along the distal half of the shaft. Chromosome number. Unreported.

  • Discussion

    It is said that the timber of this species is exported to Germany to stain skins and to make an “aniline” dye.

    Krameria cistoidea reaches farther south than any other species of Krameria. In rocky arid areas of the north coast of Chile, it is sympatric with one of Chile’s two Malpighiaceae, Dinemagonum gayanum, an oil-secreting species visited by the same pollinating Centris bees as K. cistoidea.

    This species is closely related to Krameria lappacea, with which it shares the characters of spreading sepals, glandular petals with bullate-appearing dorsal surfaces, tricolporate pollen, and long fruit spines with subterminal whorls of amber-colored barbs. The two differ primarily in habitat, plant size (in part correlated with habitat), and in number of floral parts. In most localities, except a few placed in Peru, K. lappacea occurs at high elevations. Because of its growing at high elevations, and probably also because of grazing pressure in the high central Andes, plants of K. lappacea tend to be small, densely branched, and rather appressed to the ground. Plants of K. cistoidea are comparatively larger. Like most other members of the genus, K. cistoidea has five sepals, three petaloid petals, and four stamens; K. lappacea has one fewer of each of these parts.

    In his treatment of Krameria, Chodat (1890) recognized a variant (labeled as “B”) with stamens variously connate at the base. I have never seen a specimen of this species with basally connate stamens and consequently see no reason formally to recognize any varieties.

  • Common Names

    pacul, Chanarcillo

  • Distribution

    Confined to north-central Chile from Antofagasta to Santiago in rocky habitats from 100 m to 1550 m elevation. The locality of the one specimen from Valparaiso (see below) that I have seen may be erroneous. Flowering and fruiting from October to March.

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