Calliandra surinamensis

Title

Calliandra surinamensis

Authors

Rupert C. Barneby

Scientific Name

Calliandra surinamensis Benth.

Description

38. Calliandra surinamensis Bentham, London J. Bot. 3: 105. 1844. — "Surinam, Hostmann, n. 171."-Holotypus, K! = photo s.n., NY!; isotypi, BM!, NY!, OXF!.

Inga fasciculata Willdenow, Sp. Pl. 4(2): 1022. 1806. — "Habitat in provincia Para Brasiliae ... [F. W. Sieber com- mun.] Com[es] de Hoffmannsegg." — Holotypus, B- WILLD 19048, seen in Microform! = F. Neg. 1240!. — Acacia fasciculata Poiret, Encycl. Suppl. 1: 46. 1810. Feuilleea fasciculata O. Kuntze, Revis. Gen. PI. 1: 185. 1891. Anneslia fasciculata Kleinhoonte in Pulle, Fl. Suriname 2(2): 322. 1940. — Non Calliandra fasciculata Bentham, 1840. — Equated with C. surinamensis by Bentham, 1875: 547.

C. tenuiflora Bentham, Trans. Linn. Soc. London 30: 547. 1875; & in Martius, Fl. Bras. 15(2): 416. 1876. — "Habitat ad Rio Tapajos prope Santarem Brasiliae borealis [Pará]: Spruce n. 389." — Holotypus, K!; isotypus, NY!. —Feuilleea tenuiflora O. Kuntze, Revis. Gen. Pl. 1: 189. 1891.

C. angustidens Britton & Killip, Ann. New York Acad. Sci. 35: 134. 1936. — "[cult, in a plaza at] Villavicencio, Meta, Colombia, E. Pérez Arbeláez 195." — Holotypus, US!; clastotypus (fragm.), NY!; isotypus, COL!.

C. surinamensis sensu Bentham, 1876: 417 (excl. Burchell 7526, quae = C. silvicola Taubert); Ducke, 1949: 50; Maas & Westra., Neotrop. Pl. Fam. fig. 41. 1993.

C. tenuiflora sensu Ducke, 1949: 50; Irwin, 1966: 97; Jansen-Jacobs, 1976: 469.

Low bushy but potentially arborescent shrubs with plagiotropic long-shoots, flowering at (0.7-) 1.5-6 (-10, -12) m, at maturity with flat or asymmetrically tilted crown, heteromorphic in number, size and outline of lfts and in composition of capitula, the young branchlets, lf-axes (either all around or only ventrally) and peduncles either thinly or densely pilosulous with pallid or sordid, either erect, incurved- ascending or subappressed hairs to 0.1-0.5(-0.7) mm, the annotinous and older branches glabrate blanched, the chartaceous (when young submembranous) lfts ± bicolored, lustrous and commonly glabrous (exceptionally papillate or thinly minutely puberulent) on both faces, ciliolate or not, the capitula arising singly from nearly always efoliate nodes of brachyblasts axillary to coeval or lately shed primary lvs of long-shoots, the androecia bicolored, pallid proximally, rose-carmine distally; phyllotaxy distichous. Stipules lanceolate from ± dilated base or less often ovate-triangular, mostly glabrous dorsally, those subtending primary lvs (1.5—)3—11 (— 16) x (0.8-)l-2.7(-3) mm, 8-19-nerved when young, becoming dry, pallid, brittle in age, those of brachyblasts mostly shorter. Lf-formula i/5-7, 6-9, 8-19 (-25), the lfts when relatively numerous tending to be more crowded but whether few or many equally variable in outline; petioles including pulvinus and dilated apex 2—9(—11) mm, at middle 0.5-1.3 mm diam, shallowly grooved ventrally; rachis of longer pinnae (3.5—)4—9(—11) cm, the longer interfoliolar segments (2—)2.3—12(—21) mm; lft-pulvinules 0.2-0.6 x 0.5-1 mm; lfts either decrescent toward base of rachis and thence equilong, or decrescent also distally, or accrescent from base upward, the furthest pair often longer and proportionately narrower than the penultimate one, the blades varying from linear- lanceolate and straight or almost so to lance-oblong, oblong, or rhombic-oblong (and often subsigmoid or subfalcate) from semicordate or shortly auriculate base, at apex obtuse, obtuse apiculate, or deltately acute, the penultimate pair (7.5-)8.5-25 x (1.8—)2—14 (-18) mm, (1.5—) 1.8—5(—5.3) times as long as wide; venation palmate-pinnate, the midrib of narrower lfts subcentric, of broader ones displaced to divide blade ±1:1.5, or that of relatively short and broad ones subdiagonal, the inner of 3-4 posterior primary nerves incurved-ascending nearly to or shortly beyond midblade, the secondary and reticular venules finely sharply prominulous on both faces or sometimes nearly immersed on upper. Peduncles 0.7-2 cm, randomly to 2-4(-4.5) cm, 1 (-2)-bracteate, the bract near or below middle; capitula (6-)8-21(-26)-fld, the receptacle 1.5-3.5 mm diam; bracts narrow-ovate, subulate, or narrowly lanceolate, 0.5-2.3 mm, 1-4- nerved, persistent; fls of capitulum subhomomorphic as to perianth (that of subterminal fls sometimes a little wider) but either homomorphic or heteromorphic as to androecia, these potentially of 3 sorts, with tubes: a) scarcely exserted, b) long-exserted and narrowly tubular, or c) long-exserted and dilated into a funnel up to ±4 mm diam at orifice; pedicels (sometimes scarcely differentiated externally) 0.2-0.8 x 0.4-1 mm; perianth (3-)4-5-merous, most often glabrous but sometimes minutely puberulent or thinly strigulose, the calyx sharply striate, the membranous, greenish-white or reddish corolla not so; calyx (1.5-) 1.8—3.2(—3.4) x 0.9—1.4(—1.7) mm, the depressed- ovate obtuse or triangular-subulate acute teeth 0.15-1 mm; corolla (5—)5.4—10.5(—11.4) mm, the ovate or lance-ovate lobes (0.6-)0.8-2.4(-3.3) mm; androecium 24-4-8(-52) mm, (11—) 12—26(—34)-merous, the tube 7.5—17.5(—21) mm; peripheral fls either staminate or bisexual, lacking disc, some differentiated distal fls staminate or neuter, with disc; ovary at anthesis glabrous, often pubescent after fertilization. Pods stiffly ascending on thickened peduncles, in broad profile 4.5-11(—11.5) x 0.7-1.3(—1.4) cm, the sutures to 3 mm wide in dorsal view, the stiffly leathery, obliquely (subvertically) venulose, dark brown nigrescent valves either glabrous or brownish- puberulent, the inner face of the sutures revealed at dehiscence 0.85—1.25 mm wide; seeds in broad view 7.5-10.5 x 0.45-0.7 mm, the smooth brown testa sometimes darker-speckled, lacking pleurogram.

Open places in savanna, brush-woodland, and disturbed moist forest, especially abundant and colonial along rocky riverbanks and on islands in river rapids, mostly between 5 and 450 m but attaining 1200 m on the Gran Sabana in Venezuelan Guayana, 650 m in pre-Andean Ecuador, and 1440 m in n. Colombia, widely dispersed in n. S. America: most abundant in the Guianas, s. Venezuela, and the central and lower Amazon basin in Brazil, w. to the e. Cordillera and n. Antioquia in Colombia, Amazonian Ecuador, the Ucayali valley in Peru, and Rondônia, s.-e. in Brazil into Maranhão. — Map 22. — Fl. through the year, unless drought-inhibited. — Salsa (Brazil).

The broadly drawn definition of C. surinamensis proposed herewith may come as a surprise to those familiar with the traditional taxonomy, in which C. tenuiflora has invariably been accepted as a distinct taxon. As first known to Bentham (1875: 547), C. tenuiflora differed from C. surinamensis, as then known, in having 5-6 rather than 8-12 pairs of leaflets per pinna, the largest of them >2 cm, as opposed to <1.5 cm, in length. No substantial difference in the inflorescence or the individual flower was then known, and both species were described from Para. Subsequently C. tenuiflora (sens. str.) has been considered (Irwin, 1966: 97) closer to C. purpurea, and its affinity to C. surinamensis has been lost sight of. Specimens from the whole vast range of C. surinamensis now demonstrate a continuous series of variants in number and size of leaflets that has erased the supposed discontinuity between it and C. tenuiflora. As a rule, relatively numerous leaflets are relatively small and fewer leaflets larger, and the furthest pair either is or may be largest of all in both cases. Whether few or many, the leaflets vary in outline from narrowly lanceolate to obtusely rhombic. Plurifoliolate forms of C. surinamensis are distributed over the species range, from the Guianas and lower Amazonian Brazil west to Colombia and Peru, whereas the paucifoliolate ones are scattered along the Amazon and tributaries from Para almost to the Peruvian border and north through the Guianas to Venezuelan Guyana, without establishing any independent area of dispersal. The variable development of the androecial tube, as described above, is linked neither with leaf-formula nor with geographic dispersal.