Tabebuia polyantha Urb. & Ekman
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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. Dominican Republic. La Vega: Between Bonao and La Vega, Ekman H5832 (holotype, S; isotypes, IJ, K, S, US, MO xerox).
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Synonyms
Tabebuia dolichopoda Urb. & Ekman, Tabebuia nivea Alain
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Description
Species Description - Large tree to 30 m tall, the branchlets irregularly terete, with a few conspicuous, round, raised lenticels when young, rather densely grayish lepidote. Leaves 5-7-foliolate, the leaflets narrowly obovate to oblanceolate, obtuse or rounded at apex, cuneate at base, the terminal 7-15 cm long, 3-6.4 cm wide, the basal pair 4-12 cm long, 1.5-4 cm wide, chartaceous to coriaceous, concolorous, drying gray or olive gray above and below, lepidote above and below, conspicuously and densely so when young, often rather sparsely so when mature, brochidodromous, the secondary veins plane above, prominulous below, tertiary venation plane above, usually more or less prominulous-reticulate below, petiolules slender, more or less lepidote, the terminals 1.5-4 cm long, the laterals often poorly differentiated, the petiole (3.5-)5-16 cm long. Inflorescence often borne precociously when tree is nearly leafless, terminal, usually openly corymbose paniculate and many-flowered sometimes reduced to few flowers, the bracteoles subulate and to 10 mm long but caducous before anthesis, conspicuously lepidote throughout. Flowers with the calyx campanulate, usually irregularly bilabiate, smooth, 10-22 mm long, 7-14 mm wide, drying somewhat tannish-gray from the scales; corolla white or palest pinkish white, in the latter case with noticeably pinkish-tipped buds, tubular-infundibuliform, 5-7 cm long, 2-3 cm wide at mouth of tube, the tube 3.5-5 cm long, glabrous outside, the lobes 2 cm long, somewhat ciliate, floor of tube conspicuously villous inside, sparsely villous at level of stamen insertion; stamens didynamous, the anther thecae divaricate, 3 mm long, deeply included; ovary linear, 5 mm long, 1 mm wide, very densely lepidote and conspicuously tan; disk cylindric-pulvinate, 1.5 mm long, 2.5 mm wide. Fruit 7-23 cm long, 8-9 mm wide, terete, densely lepidote, drying grayish from the scales, conspicuously and evenly longitudinally striate-ridged, the calyx persistent; seeds thin, bialate, 5-8 mm long, 23-30 mm wide, the hyaline-membranaceous wings sharply demarcated from dark brown seed body.
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Discussion
Both T. dolichopoda and T. polyantha were described in the same paper, the former from 950 m altitude in Haiti and the latter from 200 m in the central Dominican Republic. Both species were compared with T. “pentaphylla” (i.e., T. heterophylla), with T. polyantha distinguished by unspecified leaf features and the white corolla color, T. dolichopoda by a few-flowered inflorescence with longer pedicels and calyx. Examination of the types of the two species reveals that T. dolichopoda is no more than a depauperate form of T. polyantha. The “purple” flower color described for T. dolichopoda was based on an erroneous guess (“non accuratius examinata”) since no color notes are recorded on the type and additional Haitian material is described as white-flowered. Originally Urban and Ekman apparently intended to describe the Samaná Peninsula plant as a third new species, T. nivea, and this most appropriate inedited herbarium name was later taken up by Liogier who compared it with much more distantly related T. hotteana (=T. calcicola) and T. dominguensis, overlooking the identity of the Samaná plant with T. polyantha. This species was apparently once common and widespread in Hispaniolan moist forests below 1000 m altitude. This is the most extensively deforested life zone of the island and in the last half century T. polyantha has only been collected in four places—Samaná, Bayaguana, Loma Isabel de Torres above Puerto Plata, and the Jarabacoa-Güigüe area of La Vega Province. In the latter area it is restricted to a few remnant pockets of broad-leafed forest near the lower edge of the pine forest. The single remaining tree found by T. Zanoni in Samaná was dead when we revisited it in 1985. This species tends to flower precociously and can be absolutely spectacular, the only abundantly mass-flowering Tabebuia species with white flowers. It would be an excellent candidate for cultivation, especially in view of its near extinction in the wild.
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Objects
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Distribution
Northern and Central Cordilleras of Hispaniola; from near sea level to 1000 m.
Haiti South America| Dominican Republic South America| La Vega Dominican Republic South America| Monte Cristi Dominican Republic South America| Puerto Plata Dominican Republic South America| Samaná Dominican Republic South America| San Cristóbal Dominican Republic South America|