Tabebuia chrysantha (Jacq.) G.Nicholson subsp. chrysantha
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Authority
Gentry, Alwyn H. 1992. Bignoniaceae--part II (Tribe Tecomeae). Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 25: 1-370. (Published by NYBG Press)
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Family
Bignoniaceae
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Scientific Name
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Type
Type. Venezuela. Caracas (not seen). Type illustration. Jacquin Pl. hort. schoenbr. t. 211.
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Synonyms
Bignonia chrysantha (Jacq.) Jacq., Tecoma chrysantha Jacq., Tecoma spectabilis Planch. & Linden, Tabebuia rufescens Johnst., Tecoma evenia Donn.Sm., Tecoma palmeri Kraenzl.
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Description
Subspecies Description - Tree usually 10-20 m tall, the bark pale to dark gray, scaly, wood hard and heavy, dark olive brown with yellow (lapachol) deposits in the vessels, the sapwood contrastingly lighter; twigs subtetragonal, varyingly stellate-pubescent when young, glabrescent. Leaves palmately 5-foliolate, the leaflets oblong-obovate, obtuse to abruptly acuminate, obtuse to truncate at base, the terminal leaflet to 17 cm long and 9 cm wide, lateral leaflets progressively smaller, entire or serrate, membranaceous to rigid-chartaceous, lepidote above and beneath, sometimes stellate-pubescent above, always to some extent beneath, especially along main veins, the trichomes scattered to fairly dense over the lamina; terminal petiolule 1-3 cm long, the laterals shorter, the petiole 3-9 cm long, stellate pubescent to glabrate. Inflorescence a contracted more or less fasciculate terminal panicle, the branches stellate-rufescent, the bracts extremely reduced. Flowers with the calyx campanulate, 5-lobed, 5-9 mm long, 4-7 mm wide, stellate and short-dendroid pubescent, the reddish brown trichomes less than 1 mm long; corolla yellow with reddish pencilling in throat, when dried with the venation reticulate to the margins of the lobes, the dried tube and lobes indistinguishable in color, tubular-infundibuliform, 4-6.5 cm long, the tube 3-4.5 cm long and 1-2 cm wide at mouth, the lobes 0.8-1.5 cm long, glabrous outside, inside rather densely pubescent in floor and throat and glandular-pubescent at level of stamen insertion; stamens didynamous, the thecae divergent to divaricate, 2-3 mm long; pistil 1.8-3.2 cm long, the ovary linear-oblong, 3.5-5 mm long and 1.5-2 mm wide, glabrous to lepidote or sparsely stellate-puberulous (densely stellate puberulous and rather warty-surfaced in Ecuador), the ovules 8-10 seriate in each locule; disk pulvinate, 0.5-1 mm long, 2-3 mm wide. Fruit a linear-cylindric capsule, tapering to the base and apex, 15-50 cm long, 0.8-2 cm wide, rather sparsely short-stellate puberulous, finely and irregularly striate to rather rough-surfaced (in western Ecuador and Mexico); seeds 0.4-0.9 cm long, 1.4-3.3 cm wide, the wings hyaline-membranaceous, well demarcated from the seed body.
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Discussion
This species is part of a highly variable complex in which species limits are difficult to draw. In general, it is defined by having leaves with fairly sparse stellate pubescence mostly along the main veins below, and by having fruit and calyx with a relatively short reddish indumentum. This circumscription also includes T. capitata (where see discussion), which replaces T. chrysantha more or less allopatrically in most of Amazonia and may not be adequately differentiated for specific recognition. Other taxa closely related to T. chrysantha by fruit and calyx pubescence mostly have the leaflets much more densely stellate below (thus usually strongly bicolored), but T. chrysantha ssp. meridionalis also has distinctly bicolored leaflets, densely stellate below, although with longer trichomes than in T. incana or typical T. subtilis. What is here considered a southern population of T. ochracea in Bolivia, northwest Argentina, Paraguay, and southern Brazil, is intermediate between that species and T. chrysantha. This form, previously usually assigned to T. lapacho or T. ochracea, has the short reddish calyx pubescence of T. chrysantha and variable but generally intermediate leaf undersurface indumentum. The single fruit that I have seen (from Paraguay) is villous as in T. ochracea and T. chrysotricha, but the more glabrescent-leaved western populations might turn out to also have less pubescent fruits and be better placed in T. chrysantha. I here treat T. lapacho as a high altitude local endemic (see discussion under that species) and suspect that the southern collections related to T. chrysantha may be closer to T. chrysotricha, which (like T. ochracea) is most definitively differentiated by longer fruit trichomes. Unfortunately, fruits from this region are not available.
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Common Names
verdecillo, amapa, amapa prieta, roble, ahau-che, ha-hauche, matilisguate, cortez, cortez amarillo, cortez, coyote, cortez negro., guayacán, guayacán de la costa, araguaney puy, araguaney, flor amarilla, guayacán, roble amarillo, yellow poui
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Distribution
Widespread from Mexico to northern Venezuela, Trinidad, and Amazonian Peru, mostly in seasonally dry lowland forest; sea level to 800(-1200) m. Also rather widely cultivated, especially in the West Indies.
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