Nectandra grandiflora Nees
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Authority
Rohwer, Jens G. 1993. Lauraceae:
. Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 60: 1-332. (Published by NYBG Press) -
Family
Lauraceae
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Scientific Name
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Type
Type. Brazil. Without locality, Sello 1241 (lectotype, B, see discussion).
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Synonyms
Nectandra grandiflora var. latifolia Nees, Nectandra grandiflora var. oblongifolia Nees, Nectandra grandiflora var. cuneata Meisn., Nectandra grandiflora var. longifolia Meisn., Nectandra grandiflora var. obovata Meisn., Gymnobalanus regnellii Meisn., Nectandra glauca Warm.
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Description
Species Description - Trees to 15 m (but already flowering when only 3 m tall). Branchlets 5 cm below terminal bud 1.2-4(-4.8) mm in diam., only slightly angular or roundish from the beginning, at the tip with short (ca. 0.2 mm), appressed hairs, below terminal bud moderately dense or sparser, ± quickly becoming moderately sparse to glabrous; terminal buds conical to elongate, up to 4 mm long and 2 mm thick but mostly minute, densely covered with tightly appressed, short hairs. Petioles 212 mm long, 0.9-2.1 mm thick, roundish below, distinctly canaliculate above, glabrous or with hairs like those on twigs. Leaves alternate, usually obovate-elliptic, oblanceolate-elliptic, or ± elliptic, rarely oblong-(ob)lanceolate, widest 1/2 to 2/3 from the base, usually slightly above the middle, 3.5-13(-18) cm long, 1.7-5(-6.5) cm wide, 1.7-3.3(-4.7) times longer than wide, tip usually acuminate (acute to obtuse with a small acumen), base attenuate to acute, rarely obtuse, margin flat to very slightly recurved, midrib flat to convex above, level to slightly impressed, prominent below, secondary veins slightly raised to impressed above, rarely slightly convex, distinctly raised below, (3-)4-6(-8) pairs, diverging at (3fr-)35-50(-70)°, in mid-lamina running at an angle of (15-)25-40(-45)° to the midrib, tertiary venation mixed to very indistinctly scalariform, ± reticulate, ± inconspicuous above, clearly raised to scarcely visible below. Indument consisting of (moderately) short, appressed hairs only (if any), in young leaves moderately sparse to glabrous above from the beginning, ± sparse below, glabrescent on both sides. Gland dots rarely visible. Inflorescences crowded in the axils of cataphylls immediately below the terminal bud, 0.7-2.2 mm in diam. at the base, on a twig of 1-4 mm diam., (2.5-)4-9.5(-18) cm long, reaching ca. 2/3 to slightly more than the length of foliage leaves; peduncle 0.2-5 cm long, i.e., extremely short to reaching slightly more than 1/2 the length of the inflorescence, lateral branches 4-10 below terminal cyme, branched 0-2(-3) times, the lower branches often not entirely cymose, indument absent, or a few short, appressed hairs near the base of the peduncle, the flowers glabrous and distinctly glaucous (but see below). Pedicels 2.5-6(-10) mm long, 0.3-1 mm thick. Flowers 6-10(-12) mm in diam., tepals ± elongate-elliptic, (2.3-)2.7-4(-5) mm long and (1.2-)1.7-2.6(-3) mm wide, papillosity ± dense on the inside surface or on outer tepals only in basal triangle. Stamens ca. 1-1.5 mm long including the very short filament, anthers weakly to distinctly papillose, in the first whorl ± roundish-pentagonal with an acute to obtuse tip, in the second whorl pentagonal to trullate with an acute tip, in the third whorl elongate-pentagonal or roundish-rectangular with an obtuse to truncate tip. Staminodes ± clavate, often slightly glandular on adaxial side, free or nearly so. Pistil ca. 1.2-1.5 mm long, glabrous, ovary depressed spheroidal to pear-shaped, style slightly to distinctly shorter than the ovary. Receptacle shallow, ± bowl-shaped, glabrous or with a few hairs inside. Berry ellipsoid, ca. 14-20 mm long, ca. 7-12 mm in diam., cupule trumpet-shaped or distinctly swollen distally, ca. 2-6 mm high (but very shallow inside), 5-6.5 mm in diam., pedicel gradually enlarged into the cupule.
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Discussion
Nectandra grandiflora is easily recognized by its glabrous, glaucous inflorescences. Very few other species show this character, and in them the anthers are never this distinctly prolonged beyond the pollen sacs. Only in a few specimens of N. turbacensis are the flowers completely glabrous on the outside, and the anthers somewhat prolonged, but they are much smaller. There is, however, no rule without an exception. Among more than a hundred collections of N. grandiflora that I have seen, I found one (Regnell II. 238, collected in 1867, US) in which the flowers were somewhat hairy on the outside. This may be a reversal to an ancestral condition, or introgression from the closely related N. nitidula. It is certainly not worthy of formal recognition.
In the original description, Nectandra grandiflora was obviously based on several Sello collections, as the locality given reads “ad pedem iugi montium Serro de Ubra dicti et aliis in regionibus Brasiliae tropicae.” A specimen with this phrase on the label is preserved in Nees’ private herbarium (GZU), but not in B, from which herbarium the species was described. In his Systema Laurinarum (1836) Nees cites the numbers 169, 1241, 1368, 4688, and 4823. The first three of these are still preserved in Berlin. Meissner annotated the collection 169 as variety cuneata, and he cited 1368 under variety longifolia. The collection 1241 was annotated as the typical variety, a obovata, which can be interpreted as an effective lectotypification.Nectandra grandiflora var. latifolia is placed here with hesitation. I did not find the type specimen among the Lauraceae in Berlin, although at least duplicates of nearly all other Lauraceae types escaped destruction in the Second World War. According to the description it has monstrous flowers, and this suggests that perhaps it is not even a Lauraceae. Mez (1889), however, cited the type collection without doubt under N. grandiflora, and therefore I decided to leave the name here for now.Nectandra grandiflora var. latifolia was also cited in the description of N. grandiflora var. longifolia by Meissner. Its type was not cited, but (as far as I could ascertain) it was also not referred to a different taxon. Therefore the latter name has to be considered an illegitimate name based on the former.Nectandra grandiflora var. cuneata was described based on a Sello collection and a Houllet collection, both cited without numbers. As mentioned above, however, Meissner annotated the specimen Sello 169 in B as variety cuneata. Since the Houllet collection seems to be lost, and no other Sello collection was found with this annotation, Sello 169 has to be selected as the lectotype for this variety."Regnell 11. 238 bis in herb. Mart” is cited by Meissner in the description of Gymnobalanus regnellii. In an earlier publication (Rohwer 1986), I erroneously assumed that a specimen with this number in M was the holotype. The specimen, however, is flowering, and Meissner described a fruiting collection. There is no such specimen in M, and therefore I assume that it may be in BR, although it was not among the type specimens that I had on loan. A collection with monstrous fruits is preserved in US (besides two flowering collections). However, the numbers given by Regnell are species numbers rather than collection numbers, and therefore none of these specimens should be treated as an isotype prior to thorough comparison with the holotype.No type number was cited in the description of Nectandra glauca. From the material preserved in C it is obvious that the description was based on at least four collections, numbered 716/1 to 716/4. Since these are very similar to each other it seems both arbitrary and superfluous to select one of them as a lectotype. -
Common Names
canela, Canela fedida, caneleira
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Distribution
Brazil, Minas Gerais to Rio Grande do Sul. Grows mostly in somewhat open forest formations, like gallery forest or secondary capoeira; in southern Brazil mostly in Araucaria forest between 600 and 1300 m altitude. Flowers from May to December with a peak in August to October. Fruits October to February.
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