Mapania

  • Authority

    Maguire, Bassett. 1967. The botany of the Guayana Highland--Part VII. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 17: 1-439.

  • Family

    Cyperaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Mapania

  • Description

    Genus Description - Spikes compound, ellipsoid or oblong, with numerous glumes tightly imbricated, each subtending an axillary sessile spikelet; spikelets consisting of 4 to 6 secondary glumes (squamellae), the lowest pair of squamellae opposite and lateral, folded with an acute keel, dissimilar to the rest in being notably ciliate or hispid-spinulose on the keel, empty or bearing a monandrous staminate flower, the other squamellae (2 to 4) imbricate, flat, mostly linear-oblong, hyaline, scarcely veined, as a rule the lowest one in a group of 4 bearing a monandrous staminate flower, both empty in a group of 2, occasionally all or some of these squamellae connate in various degrees making a spathe-like or sac-like struct-ture; pistillate flower a terminal naked pistil, the style slender, long, the stigmas 2 or 3, the ovary developing into a globose, ellipsoid or ovoid fructification, the utricle completely adnate to the contained achene, in section Tepuianae the upper part remarkably spongy. Large or medium-sized perennials; leaves radical or nearly so, sometimes the upper 1 to few cauline, in section Mapania wholly reduced into bladeless basal cataphylls; blade linear, lanceolate or oblong, 1-costate, sometimes petiolate, herbaceous; culms scape-like, occasionally few-nodose, central or lateral; inflorescence terminal, congested in a head subtended by scale-like or leaf-like involucral bracts, in sections Tepuianae and Thoraeostachyum tending to be corymbose with few to several elongated rays, both consisting of many spikes.

    Distribution and Ecology - Nearly 45 species in the tropics of both hemispheres with the center of distribution in Malaysia; 12 species in the American tropics.

  • Discussion

    Type. Mapania sylvatiea Aublet.

    I recognize eight sections in the genus Mapania. In the New World tropics three of these eight sections, Mapania. Pycnocephala, and Tepuianae, occur. The following is an enumeration of these three neotropical sections.