Dalea coerulea var. longispicata

  • Title

    Dalea coerulea var. longispicata

  • Authors

    Rupert C. Barneby

  • Scientific Name

    Dalea coerulea var. longispicata (Ulbr.) Barneby

  • Description

    77b.  Dalea coerulea (Linnaeus fil.) Schinz & Thellung var. longispicata (Ulbrich) Barneby

    (Plate LXXIX)

    Spikes 4-14 cm long, 14-18 mm diam; calyx-tube glabrous or thinly pubescent externally, 2.9-3.7 mm long, the dorsal tooth 3-5.5 mm long, the glands in the intercostal membranes rather large, up to 0.3-0.8 mm long, not crowded below the middle of tube; epistemonous petals ultramarine blue. — Collections: 31 (o).

    Habitats of var. coerulea, (1500) 1800-3200 m, locally abundant in inter-Andean valleys of n. and centr. Peru, especially on Rio Maranon upstream from Amazonas (prov. Bongara and Chachapoyas) and the sources of Rio Huallaga in Huanuco and Junin, thence s.-e., apparently rarer, to the Apurimac and Urubamba forks of Rio Ucayali in Ayacucho and Cuzco, entirely e. of the Continental Divide except marginally near the crest in La Libertad (prov. Santiago de Chuco). —Flowering irregularly through the year .—Representative: Amazonas. Bongara: Ferreyra & Acleto 15,166 (NY, US). Chachapoyas: Wurdack 754 (F, NY, UC, US). Cajamarca. Celen- din: Ferreyra 15,099 (NY, US). Cutervo: Ferreyra & Acleto 15,357 (NY, US); Sandeman 4167 (K, OXF). La Libertad. Huamachuco: Lopez & Sagastegui 2799 (US). Bolivar: Lopez & Sagastegui 3283, 3303 (US). Santiago de Chuco: Stork & Horton 9959 (F, US). Ancash. Huari: typus of D. longispicata. Huanuco. Huanuco: Ferreyra 2120, 8158 (US); Macbride & Featherstone 2085 (F, NY, US). Pachitea: Macbride 3576 (F, US). Ambo: Macbride & Featherstone 2427 (F, NY, US). Junin. Tarma: Killip & Smith 22,219 (NY, US). La Mar: Weberbauer 5570 (F, US). Cuzco. Urubamba: Stafford 1062 (F, K); Sandeman 3577 (OXF).

    Dalea coerulea (Linn. f.) Schinz & Thell. var. longispicata (Ulbr.) Barneby, stat. nov., based on Dalea longispicata (long-spiked) Ulbr., Feddes Repert. 2: 6. 1906. — "Peruvia: In Pichiu et Conin in Depart. Anchachs provinciae Huari 3500-3600 m. s. m. (A. Weberbauer, no. 2924, coll. 19 April 1903 spec. flor. et fruct.)." — Holotypus, formerly B, survives as Field Neg. 2036, F, NY, US!

    Dalea macrostachya (large-spiked) Ruiz & Pavon ex Moricand, Pl. Nouv. Amer. 6 (in Mem. Soc. Geneve 6: 534), tab V. 1833. — "Habitat in Nova Hispania." — Holotypus, labelled "Nouvelle Espagne, M. Pavon, [misit] 1827," G!— Parosela macrostachya (Moric.) Rose, Contrib. U. S. Nat. Herb. 12: 273. 1909. Non P. macrostachya sensu Rydb., N. Amer. Fl. 24: 110. 1920, quae = D. lutea (Cav.) Willd.

    In Flora of Peru Macbride (1943) reduced D. longispicata to D. coerulea, of which it seems indeed to be hardly more than a large-flowered expression, but this coinciding with a dispersal pattern that lends it some taxonomic significance. There is a critical area in Amazonas, Peru, where material can be sorted artificially by size of keel-petals; elsewhere the vars. coerulea and longispicata are readily distinguished. One collections from Junin, Killip & Smith 24,333, is almost var. coerulea although found in the same locality as var. longispicata {no. 24,289, F); it is interpreted as a minor variant.

    With the exception of the much rarer D. ayavacensis, this is the only shrubby Peruvian dalea with large blue flowers coinciding with aristiform calyx-teeth longer than the tube. It was collected first in the 1789s by Ruiz and Pavon (F), the exact locality not recorded.

    The typus of D. macrostachya, supposedly collected in New Spain, i.e. in Mexico or possibly Guatemala, is characteristic Peruvian var. longispicata. The mistake about its origin must be attributed not to Moricand, but to Pavon, who distributed the specimen accompanied by his usual terse label bearing the legend "Dalea macrostachya. N.E." Pavon, of course, was never in Mexico, but had access to the herbaria collected there by Sesse and collaborators, and sent many of these to Moricand and other correspondents abroad. In 1827, when Moricand received this Dalea, Pavon was nearly seventy, harassed by debt, and selling miscellaneous packets of plants from the New World, without any precise data as to their origin. While the collector of D. macrostachya cannot now be known with any certainty, it seems not unlikely that the specimen is a duplicate of the Pavon specimen at Field Museum, mentioned in the preceding paragraph.