MONSTERA ACUMINATA
PROTOLOGUE: Monstera acuminata K.Koch, published in Index Seminum Horti Botanici Berolinensis, Appendix 1855, App.: 4 (1855). The protologue is reproduced below.
SYNONYMS:
HETEROTYPIC SYNONYMS: Monstera belizensis Lundell; Monstera chiapensis Matuda; Monstera dimidiata Schott; Monstera grandifolia Standl. & Steyerm.; Monstera karwinskyi Schott; Monstera viridispatha Matuda
OTHER NAMES: Bejuca de Tuza, Conte tuza, Conte arpon, Conte de mimbre (Mexico); Hoka de sereno (Honduras); Madre de harpon, se wan en, kolkuk (Guatemala)
DISTRIBUTION: Mexico to C. America: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Nicaragua.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Belize: Toledo Guatemala: Escuintla, Izabal, Jalapa, San Marcos, Suchitepéquez, Zacapa Honduras: Comayagua, Olancho, Santa Bárbara Mexico: Chiapas, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Tabasco, Veracruz Nicaragua: Granada, Río San Juan iNaturalist: Alta Verapaz, Atlántida, Campeche, Cayo, Chiapas, Cortés, Oaxaca, Orange Walk, Petén, San Luis Potosí, Santa Bárbara, Stann Creek, Tabasco, Toledo, Veracruz.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Nomadic vine, appressed-climbing habit. Seedlings: filiform. Juvenile plants: root climbers; stem dorsoventrally compressed, smooth, greenish; internodes 3–7 cm long, 3–5 mm diam.; petiole more or less distinct, greenish, smooth, 7–11 cm long, sheathed to base of the geniculum; petiole sheath persistent; blades obovate, cordate at base, acuminate at apex, coriaceous, 9–12 × 7–9 cm, slightly appressed to the phorophyte; fenestrations present or absent. Adult plants: root climbers; stems dark-green, smooth or verrucose, cylindrical or dorsiventrally compressed; internodes 1.0–8.5 cm long, 1–3 cm diam., 0.3–2.8 times longer than wide; anchor roots brown or black; feeder roots corky, dark-brown; petiole dark green or greenish, smooth or verrucose at base, sheathed up to half the geniculum, 25–66 cm long; petiole sheath persistent; geniculum more or less evident, smooth, 2.0–4.5 cm long; blades lanceolate or elliptical, widely truncate to obtuse at base, acuminate at apex, thinly coriaceous, drying blackish or greenish, 35–72 × 15–40 cm, 1.8–2.3 times longer than wide, slightly decurrent on the geniculum (decurrent part 1–2 mm wide); midrib sunken adaxially, raised abaxially, primary lateral veins 6–15 per side, slightly sunken adaxially, raised abaxially, departing midrib at 35–60°, secondary veins inconspicuous, collective veins absent; fenestrations present or absent, 1–6(9) oblong-elliptical perforations when present, that are located on both blade sides between the midrib and margin; margins entire or rarely pinnatilobed.⁴
INFLORESCENCE:
Inflorescences on ascending stems, 1–2 simultaneously at the flowering season, arranged in the leaf axils, rarely in deciduous cataphylls; peduncle smooth, 4–13 cm long; 1.5–2.5 cm diam.; spathe obtuse, length equal to the spadix, bright-green during development, light-green externally and white internally at anthesis, deciduous in fragments after anthesis; spadix white during development, cream at anthesis, 8–12 cm long, 2–3 cm diam., (3.1)4.5–7.0 times longer than wide; basal sterile flowers 5–6 mm long, with a yellowish stigmatic secretion; fertile flowers 5–7 mm long; stamens 2–7 mm long, with laminar filaments; anthers 1.0–2.5 mm long; ovary quadrangular in longitudinal section, ribbed, 3–4 × 1.5–2.5 mm; style pentagonal or hexagonal, 1.5–2.5 × 1.5–2.5 mm; stigma linear, with a yellowish stigmatic secretion; berries with a stylar cap yellow, green during development; seeds not seen.⁴
ECOLOGY:
Monstera acuminata ranges from Mexico (Chiapas, Escuintla, Oaxaca, San Luis Potosí, Tabasco, Jalapa, Veracruz) to Guatemala (Escuintla, Izabal, San Marcos, Suchitepequez, Zacapa), Belize (Toledo), Honduras (Comayagua, Copn, Olancho, Santa Barbara, Santa Rita) and Nicaragua (Granada, Río San Juan, Zelaya) at 50–1000(1524) m, in Tropical moist forest and Premontane wet forest life zones. Flowering January-March, August-September. Fruiting in January-July, April-August, and November.⁴
ETYMOLOGY:
The epithet refers to the acuminate leaves.⁵
NOTES:
1. The species is a member of sect. Marcgraviopsis and is characterized by its appressed-climbing habit, minutely speckled petioles which are sheathed throughout with flaking or fibrous margins, ovate blades which are very asymmetric, unequal and truncate to acute at base and dry dark brown to grayish yellow-brown or blackened, usually with 1–9 perforations on both sides of the blade, 6–12 primary lateral veins as well as 1–2 inflorescences per axil with the peduncle typically shorter than the spadix, a spathe that is 3–5 cm longer than the spadix and a spadix about (3.1)4.5–7.0 times longer than broad and white to pale yellow-cream at anthesis with the fruiting spadix yellowish, pale yellow-green to white. Monstera acuminata could be confused with Monstera spruceana but differs in having petiole 7–11 cm long (vs. 25–50 cm long), petiole sheath persistent (vs. petiolar sheath disintegrating as fibrous residues), spadix 8–12 × 2–3 cm (vs. spadix 15–25 × 3–6 cm), spadix 4.5–7.0 times longer than wide (vs. spadix 8–9 times longer than wide), and spathe 3–5 cm longer than the spadix (vs. spathe uniform or up to 0.5 cm longer than the spadix). Monstera acuminata is distributed from southern Mexico to Nicaragua, while Monstera sprucena is distributed from Costa Rica to Brazil. Nomenclatural remarks:—In the protologue of Monstera karwinskyi, Schott (1859) indicated that the species was described using material from ´Mexico (Colipa)´ and cited ´Karwinsky´ as the collector. Wilhelm Friedrich von Karwinsky von Karwin (1780–1855) was a German-Austrian naturalist who traveled in Brazil and Mexico. In this last country, Karwinsky made two expeditions. The first was carried out between 1826 and 1831 and was sponsored by the German-American Mining Society of Dusseldorf and the Bavarian government to make further collections of natural history objects. The second expedition, where he collected the type of Monstera karwinskyi, was carried out between 1841 and 1843 and was supported by five different sponsors in St. Petersburg, mainly to look for wildlife (plants and animals) and minerals. On this second trip to Mexico, Karwinsky met the Danish collector Frederik Liebmann (1813–1856) in Veracruz dunring February 1941, where they agreed to travel and explore together northward through the lowlands (Veracruz to Xicaltepec from February to May, 1841). Both naturalists arrived at Colipa, the type locality of Monstera karwinskyi, where they explored for 27 days (presumably until April 1941). As a result of the entire expedition, Karwinsky collected more than 2000 gatherings (in 6 major sets), which were partly named, and distributed c. 1851 by Ruprecht in St. Petersburg (McVaugh 1980). Engler & Krause (1908), in their revision of the Monsteroideae, recognized Monstera karwinskyi and cited three specimens, the presumed holotype from W (Karwinsky s.n.) and two other specimens, one from B (Kerber s.n.) and another from C (Liebmann s.n.). Both the specimen from W and B (photo at F) were destroyed in the second world war. However, the authors traced two extant specimens which also appear to match the diagnosis made by Schott (1859), one specimen from C (no collector information, barcode C10021452) and another at LE (Karwinsky 838, barcode LE00000997). Both specimens were examined by M. Madison in 1975, where he noted ¨holotype¨ on the specimen from C, however on the specimen from LE he wrote ¨Karwinsky 838 = holotype¨. Subsequently, Madison (1977) in his revision of Monstera, cited the specimen from C as ¨type¨ and further alleged that it was collected by Karwinsky; additionally, he designated the specimen from LE (Karwinsky 838) as ¨paratype¨. The Material from C (barcode C10021452) bears handwritings on a few notes about habit, identifications, locality (¨Colipa¨) and date of collection (¨4/41¨), however it does not include collector information. This material bears annotations by two people: the label at the lower right with the information of the locality and identification (as Monstera adansonii Schott) has a handwriting very similar to that of Liebmann; however, the other label (to the lower left) noted a different identification (as Monstera karwinskyi) which corresponds to an annotation by Schott himself. It is possible that this specimen at C was actually originally collected by Liebmann during his trip with Karwinsky in May 1841; in fact, Engler & Krause (1908) cited Liebmann as the collector of this specimen. Considering this information, the authors believe that the material from C does not contain sufficient evidence to indicate that it represents a duplicate of the original material cited by Schott (1859) which was a collection made by Karwinsky. Additionally, Schott (1859) made no mention of Liebmann in the original protologue of Monstera karwinskyi, so this specimen should be excluded at a potential lectotype. On the other hand, the specimen from LE (barcode LE00000997) seems to represent the only extant original material. This material bears a small handwritten label with an identification (Caladium pertusum), also noted ¨a Colipa usque Papantla ubicumque frequens, scandens super arbores¨; additionally, it has a typewritten label with the information on the collector and number (Karwinsky 838) and the locality (Iter Mexicanum, 1841, 1842). According to McVaugh (1980), much of the material collected by Karwinsky was not consistently numbered by the collector; however, the material was sorted into systematic order by family and genus, and numbers were arbitrarily assigned, presumably by Ruprecht. Additionally, it is known that Ruprecht, in circa 1851, distributed duplicates to other herbaria outside the former Soviet Union, but mostly without name or other data (McVaugh 1980). Curiously, Schott (1859) included in the same work three new taxa of Araceae (Anthurium karwinskyi Schott (1859: 101), Monstera karwinskyi and Philodendron subincisum (1859: 99)), where the material examined was collected by Karwinsky in Colipa and Paplanta (during his second exploration done in 1841–1843). This information could support the notion that the original material examined by Schott was one of the duplicates sent by Ruprecht, this would explain why the original protologue of Monstera karwinskyi includes scarce information, as well as explain the fact that the material from LE (Karwinsky 838) has a numbering which was omitted in the original protologue in Schott (1859). Considering the facts layed out above, the authors concluded that Madison’s citation of the specimen at C as (implicitly) the holotype was incorrect and given that the specimen is not demonstrably part of the original material on which the protologue was based, Madison’s citation of the “type” is not able to be interpreted as an implicit lectotypification. The authors therefore propose a corrected typification for Monstera karwinskyi, where they designate the specimen Karwinsky 838 (bardcode LE00000997) from LE, cited by Madison as a paratype, as the lectotype. On the other hand, in the case of Monstera chiapensis, it was not possible to trace the syntypes cited by Matuda (1949), which are presumably deposited in the HEM Herbarium (at Matuda Herbarium); therefore, it was not possible to perform a proper typification.⁴
STORY:
STORY TITLE: The Monstera of the Maya ruins
Most herbarium collections of Monstera acuminata are sterile, because the plant flowers more than 15 m above the ground. Individuals may reach 30 m, covering the trunk of the host completely without spreading into its branches.⁵ It is abundant in the central Petén, where it grows on the Maya ruins at Tikal and Uaxactún, and its range runs north to San Luis Potosí, making it the northernmost species of the genus.⁵
The accepted name comes from an 1855 Berlin seed list and a living plant that Warszewicz had brought from Central America.⁵ A second name, Monstera karwinskyi, was published in 1859 from material that Karwinsky collected at Colipa in Veracruz during his second Mexican expedition of 1841 to 1843, a journey funded from St. Petersburg to look for plants, animals and minerals, on which he met the Danish collector Liebmann.⁴
The stem is built the wrong way round for a tree. It is narrowest at the base and widens upward, so that hydraulic conductance rises toward the crown, a consequence of a hemiepiphyte that starts life small on the ground and adds girth only as it climbs.⁶
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Monstera acuminata K.Koch
2. Index Seminum Horti Botanici Berolinensis, Appendix 1855, App.: 4 (1855) — protologue.
3. iNaturalist: Monstera acuminata
Additional photos by David Scherberich
Additional photo from Wikimedia Commons by Annika Lindqvist
