Pilocarpus pauciflorus A.St.-Hil.

  • Authority

    Kaastra, Roelof C. 1982. A monograph of the Pilocarpinae (Rutaceae). Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 33: 1-198. (Published by NYBG Press)

  • Family

    Rutaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Pilocarpus pauciflorus A.St.-Hil.

  • Type

    Type. Saint-Hilaire 1734(0), Brazil. Santa Catarina: Nr. Itapocoroí, Mar 1820, fl (lectotype, P ("forets vierges"); isolectotypes, MPU, P ("sylvis primaevis")).

  • Synonyms

    Pilocarpus fluminensis Casar. ex Engl., Pilocarpus breviracemosus R.S.Cowan, Pilocarpus organensis Occhioni & Rizzini, Pilocarpus pauciflorus A.St.-Hil.

  • Description

    Species Description - Shrub or small tree 1-6 m tall with trunk reported as 7 cm in diam, (once reported from São Paulo as a tall tree); dead bark very thin, gray-purplish-brown with minute elongate-reticulate cracks, falling off in minute chips, with green boundary layer and a living bark 2.5 mm thick (according to Lindeman); branchlets 2-4 mm thick, grayish-green-brown, shining when young, pubescent with hairs 0.05-0.1 mm long, becoming glabrous in age; perules of terminal buds triangular, strigillose with yellow-tawny hairs ca. 0.3 mm long. Leaves alternate or subopposite, crowded or not at the apex of branchlets, simple or indistinctly 1-foliolate; petiole semiterete, canaliculate towards base by erect wings, distally sometimes turgid-geniculate, 4-25(-40) mm long and 1 mm thick, glabrous or pubescent with hairs 0.05-0.1 mm; the wings formed by the decurrent base of the blade, up to 0.2-0.3 mm broad; blade (narrowly) elliptic to (narrowly) obovate, 5.5-16 cm long (-30 cm near ends of branchlets) and 1.8-5.5 cm broad (-9 cm near ends of branchlets), long-attenuate or narrowly cuneate towards base, decurrent along petiole, obtuse or acuminate at apex, the very tip retuse, emarginate, or entire, margin revolute; the blade chartaceous or subcoriaceous, grayish-green, shining, glabrous or pubescent with spreading hairs 0.05-0. l(-0.2) mm at base and midvein below, venation brochidodromous, midvein usually plane and longitudinally wrinkled above, principal veins prominulous. Racemes 1 or 2 per branch, subterminal, erect, 5-40 × 1.5-2.5(-3) cm, in fruit to 45 cm long, many-flowered, developing acri- and basipetally; rachis 1-1.5 mm thick, glabrous or puberulous with hairs 0.1 mm long; bracts and bractlets depressedly triangular, to 0.7 mm long, subglabrous; pedicels inserted at 70-90°, 2.5-9(-11) × 0.5-1 mm, indument like that of rachis; bractlets (2-)3-4, alternate or subopposite at variable height. Flowers 7-9 mm in diam.; calyx 5-lobed; lobes separate, depressedly ovate or suborbicular, 0.4-0.7 × 0.9-1 mm, rounded, thinly coriaceous, glabrous; petals cochlear to subvalvate, 3-3.9 × 1.7-2.4 mm, at tip inflexed through 0.7 mm, slightly carinate above, coriaceous, yellowish-green, shining underneath, glabrous but beneath in bud often beset with hairs 0.05 mm long, venation actinodromous, median nerve thicker; filaments truncate, flattened, 2-3 × 0.3-0.5 mm, yellowish-green; anthers ovoid, heart-shaped or suborbicular, recurved, (1-) 1.2-1.5 × (0.8-) 1-1.5 mm, with a dorsal gland 0.2-0.5 mm; disc 0.5-1 mm high and 2-3 mm in diam., irregularly 10-plicate, glabrous to mostly strigose with yellowish-tawny, hyaline hairs 0.1-0.4 mm; carpels 0.7-0.9 mm high, protruding 0.3-0.6 mm beyond the disc, indument like that of the disc, with internal glands; ovule 1 per carpel; style at anthesis obsolete to 0.1 mm long and 0.7 mm thick, after anthesis to 0.2 mm long; stigma subsessile, capitate, 0.2-0.5 × 0.5-0.7 mm. Mericarps ellipsoidal or obovoid, (6-)7-15 × (5-)7-14 mm, dorso-apically rounded, blunt or rounded at very apex, with glands to 0.5 mm, glabrous but young and sterile ones usually sparsely strigillose, dehiscent to 1/3-1/2 below tip; seed 1 per mericarp, ellipsoidal, 7.7-12 × 4.3-8.5 × 3.8-4 mm, at apex curved or not, ventral axis straight, slightly keeled on the back, testa externally flatly colliculate with angular interspaces 0.05-0.1 mm; hilum in the upper part of the ventral axis, ca. 2.5-3 × 1.2-1.3 mm; embryo 1 or 2, if 1: provided with 2 or 3 cotyledons (or the third cotyledon belonging to a second, incomplete embryo?), if 2: provided with 4 or 2 cotyledons, dirty greenish, (one of them) large, with or without an internal, small, thin cotyledon and an external, large cotyledon ca. 8 × 4.6 × 3 mm with ears 0.4-1 mm long, radicle 1.1-1.2 mm long, projecting or enclosed, plumule 0.3-0.7 mm long; radicle and especially the plumule (rather densely) strigose with tawny, hyaline hairs 0.05-0.4 mm, or subglabrous; the second embryo, if any, smaller, with an external cotyledon ca. 6.5 × 3.5 × 1.5 mm, glabrous.

  • Discussion

    This species sometimes superficially resembles Pilocarpus spicatus var. spicatus. In that case P. spicatus has strigose ovaries. The diameter of the flowers of P. spicatus is smaller, however.

    Pilocarpus pauciflorus occasioned much brain-racking to me. At first I intended to place it as a variety of P. spicatus. This was due to a misinterpretation of the description by Saint-Hilaire "pedicelli 2-3 longi." The measurement "linea" was omitted here, not "mm"! However, when I studied the type in P, I realized that the present species is identical with P. breviracemosus. Cowan, in his "Rutaceae of Santa Catarina" (1960) did not mention P. pauciflorus, but he is of the same opinion now, see Cowan and Smith (1973).

    The "type" of Pilocarpus fluminensis has poorly developed fruits with mericarps ca. 6 × 5 mm. The sterile mericarps are strigose, the pedicels 7 mm long, and the persistent petals ca. 2.4 mm long when dry. The racemes are short.Although the mericarps are small, the "type" does not differ from other specimens of P. pauciflorus: the isotype of P. breviracemosus, Reitz & Klein 4685 (NY), also has some small fruits.

    In specimens from outside Rio de Janeiro the racemes are 5-17 cm long, and just after flowering up to 24 cm. The racemes of P. organensis, as far as I was able to study them, are 30-35 cm long, in fruit 40 cm (according to the protologue still 5 cm longer). These long racemes, together with the large apical leaves (20-30 × 5-9 cm according to the protologue), recently gave rise to the publication of the new species P. organensis by Occhioni and Rizzini. However, the collection Glaziou 1070, from Mt. Corcovado near Rio de Janeiro, shows racemes with flowers still in bud 22-35 cm long, and on the sheet in BR also one flowering raceme 12 cm only. The leaves are up to 16 × 5.5 cm. In other characters neither Glaziou 1070 nor P. organensis differ from P. pauciflorus. Apparently these collections from Rio de Janeiro are somewhat more luxuriant, which may be due to the different climatological conditions. The same phenomenon occurs in Metrodorea nigra. Therefore I reduce P. organensis to synonymy under P. pauciflorus.

    Seeds are rarely found in herbarium specimens.

  • Common Names

    pitaguara-do-branco

  • Distribution

    Brazil, Bahia (not mapped), Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo (rare), Paraná, and Santa Catarina. Forests and cerrado; alt. 10-850 m. Flowering Mar-Oct. Fig. 43C.

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