MONSTERA ADANSONII
PROTOLOGUE: Monstera adansonii Schott, published in Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode 1830(4): 1028 (1830). The protologue is reproduced below.
SYNONYMS:
HOMOTYPIC SYNONYMS: Calla dracontium G.Mey.; Calla pertusa (L.) Kunth; Dracontium pertusum L.; Monstera pertusa (L.) de Vriese
OTHER NAMES: Bois de couleuvre, Caracol, Siguini (Guadeloupe). Chirrivaca (Costa Rica); Halloquaballa (Arawak, Guyana); Hierba de puerco, Pasmo (Panama); Patquina (Peru); Piñanona (Costa Rica); Sacafrio (Venezuela); Sipó tracua, Tracua (Brazil); Ventanillo (Costa Rica, Nicaragua). Corcamilla, Picatón (Venezuela); Imbe, Palma de São Sebastião (Brazil)
DISTRIBUTION: Trop. America: Bolivia, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Leeward Is., Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, Windward Is..
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Trinidad and Tobago: Tobago iNaturalist: Alajuela, Antioquia, Bahia, Cartago, Casanare, Ceará, Chiriquí, Coclé, Colón-PA, Cundinamarca, Espírito Santo, Guanacaste, Heredia, Limón, Magdalena, Mato Grosso, Meta, Minas Gerais, Paraná, Pará, Pernambuco, Puntarenas, Rio de Janeiro, San José, Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Tobago, Valle del Cauca, Veraguas.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Terrestrial or nomadic vine, appressed-climbing or climbing habit. Seedlings: bearing foliage leaves. Juvenile plants: root climbers; stems light-green or dark, smooth or slightly rough, cylindrical or flattened; internodes 3–5 cm long, 0.5–10.0 mm diam., usually 5 times longer than wide; petiole distinct, dark-green, smooth or slightly rough, 10–15 cm long, sheathed to base of the geniculum; petiole sheath deciduous or persistent; blades ovate-lanceolate, attenuate, cordate or truncate at base, acuminate at apex, subcoriaceous, 10–15 × 5–10 cm, not appressed to the phorophyte; fenestrations present or absent. Adult plants: root climbers; stem light-brown, light-green or dark-green, smooth or with small white pustules, sometimes with white dots, cylindrical or slightly flattened; cataphylls light green, whitish or yellowish-green, deciduous but leaving dry fragments on the peduncle; internodes 1–6 cm long, 1.5–3.5 cm diam.; anchor roots dark brown or blackish; feeder roots dark brown; petiole greenish, sometimes with white dots, smooth or with small white pustules, scarcely verrucose at basebase, 25–70 cm long, sheathed to basebase of the geniculum; petiole sheath deciduous, sometimes with fibrous residues; geniculum smooth, flattened or sunken adaxially, convex abaxially, 2–4 cm long; blades ovate, lanceolate-ovate or oblong, broadly cuneate to rounded, truncate or rarely cordate at base, acuminate at apex, coriaceous, drying blackish, reddish, yellowish or olive-green, 23–65 × 17–30 cm, 1.3–1.8 times longer than wide, undulate-decurrent on the geniculum (7–11 undulations of 0.5–1.0 mm wide); midrib flattened adaxially, convex abaxially, drying black or yellowish green on both surfaces; primary lateral veins 15–35 per side, emitting at a very low angle one or two robust secondary veins from near base or to ca. 1/3rd of the way from base of the primary veins, especially in the proximal 2/3rds of the blade, sunken to slightly sunken adaxially, raised abaxially, departing midrib at 45–80° (rarely at 90°), drying black or yellowish; secondary veins slightly prominent, reticulate towards the margin or parallel to the lateral nerves, undulate when dry; collective veins slightly visible; fenestrations present or absent, rounded, ovate or ellipsoid when present, and distributed along the blade near the midrib, sometimes with filaments separating the fenestrations; margins entire or pinnatilobed (2–5 lobes per side), due to tearing of the fenestrations that extend to the margin.⁴
INFLORESCENCE:
Inflorescences on ascending and pendent stems, 4–8 simultaneously at the flowering season, arranged in the leaf axils or into cataphylls; peduncle smooth or slightly rough, 12–20 cm long; 1.4–1.6 cm diam.; spathe short or long acuminate, light green and yellowish green during development, white or yellowish green externally, white internally at anthesis, 13–20 × 5–14 cm, up to 5 cm longer than the spadix, slightly coriaceous or membranous, sometimes with revolute margins, completely open during anthesis or remaining convolute in the lower part, later deciduous or marcescent post-anthesis; spadix white or yellowish during development, cream-yellowish at anthesis, 10–15 cm long, 1.5–2.0 cm diam., (4.6)7.0–9.2 times longer than wide; basal sterile flowers with a yellow stigmatic secretion, 3–5 mm long; fertile flowers 4–6 mm long; stamens 1–6 mm long, with laminar filaments; anthers 1–2 mm long; ovary quadrangular or rectangular in longitudinal section, ribbed, 3–4 × 2–3 mm; style compressed, pentagonal or hexagonal, 0.5–2.0 × 2–3 mm; stigmatophore columnar, 0.5–1.0 mm long, absent (i.e. becoming unobservable) in dry specimens; stigma linear or linear-curved, with a transparent stigmatic secretion; berries creamy-white, yellowish green during development, pulp whitish; seeds dark green, 3–6 mm long.⁴
ECOLOGY:
In Central America it is very common in Tropical moist forest, whereas in Colombia it occurs most often in Tropical wet forest from sea level to 975 m. In Central America the species flowers and fruits throughout the rainy season (April to August), less frequently as early as February and as late as October. Fruiting occurs mostly September to December, less frequently as early as July.⁴
ETYMOLOGY:
After Michel Adanson (1727–1806), French botanist and author of the name Monstera.⁶
NOTES:
1. The species is a member of sect. Monstera and is characterized by its ovate-elliptic, usually perforate blades, usually less than twice as long as broad, unequal at base with one side truncate to subcordate and the other side cuneate to acute, by primary lateral veins at least on one side arising at an angle of more than 60° and with a peduncle that equals or exceeds the spadix. It is most easily confused with Monstera siltepecana but that species differs by typically drying darker brown, by having more perforations and by having the secondary lateral veins conspicuously reticulate. Madison (1977) recognized Monstera adansonii as having three varieties with the typical variety being restricted to the West Indies, var. klotzschiana (Schott) Madison as being restricted to South America, throughout much of the Amazon basin from southern Venezuela and the Guianas south to Paraná State in Brazil to Amazonian Peru and Bolivia, mostly preferring secondary forest, and the var. laniata (Schott) distributed from Nicaragua to Peru, Venezuela, the Guianas, and Brazil. Subsequent to Madison’s, studies by Mayo and Andrade (2013) have recognized the three varieties recognized by Madison as distinct subspecies, Monstera adansonii subsp. laniata, Monstera adansonii subsp. klotzschiana and Monstera adansonii subsp. blanchetii. For this review Monstera adansonii subsp. laniata is the only subspecies present in Central America. In addition, Monstera seemanii described from Panama is included under synonyms of this subspecies. Populations of Monstera adansonii considered as the subsp. laniata in central Panama and towards the Darien region, have a more closely related morphological similarity to Monstera adansonii subsp. blanchetii. However, this complex must be analyzed with more morphological details about the subspecies considered by Mayo & Andrade (2013). For more details about the taxonomic comments and nomenclatural notes see Cedeño-Fonseca et al. (2022). Nomenclatural remarks:—Schott (1854), in the original protologue of Monstera friedrichsthalii, only included the description and some taxonomic notes, however he did not include information on the locality or collector name. Subsequently, Schott (1860) in his Prodromus systematis Aroidearum, added that the plant comes from “Guatemala” and recognizes Friedrichsthal as the original collector. This information is again reiterated in the revision by Engler & Krause (1908), where they cited the holotype specimen as follows: “Guatemala, Niquinomo, Friedrichsthal n. 1206 - Kais. Herb. Wien.” Almost all the Central American herbarium material collected by Emanuel von Friedrichsthal contains labels designating that the specimens were collected in “Guatemala”; nevertheless, historical evidence (Taracena-Arriola & Sellen 2006) and location notes included on the labels suggest that Friedrichsthal actually collected in several countries of Central America, not only in Guatemala. Furthermore, the locality cited by Engler & Krause (1908) indicates that the plant actually comes from Niquinohomo (as “Niquinomo”) in Nicaragua. It is well known that almost all of the original Araceae material housed in W (which was studied by Schott himself) was destroyed during World War II (Riedl & Riedl-Dorn 1988), including the holotype of Monstera friedrichsthalii. Unfortunately, until now, it has been impossible to locate any original material of Monstera friedrichsthalii in the herbaria consulted. In the absence of original material, we propose the specimen Pedro P. Moreno 11142 (MO, two sheets: 3189310 and 3614609) as the neotype of Monstera friedrichsthalii.⁴
2. Conservation status: Monstera adansonii is protected in the Reserva Forestal Los Santos, Reserva Natural Absoluta Cabo Blanco, Zona Protectora Arenal-Monteverde, Zona Protectora el Rodeo, Zona Protectora Cerros de La Carpintera, Zona Protectora Cerros de Escazú, Zona Protectora Cerro de Turrubares, Parque Nacional La Cangreja, Parque Nacional Corcovado, Parque Nacional Barra Honda, Parque Nacional Carara, Parque Nacional Diriá, Parque Nacional Piedras Blancas, Parque Internacional de La Amistad, Parque Nacional Corcovado, Parque Nacional Guanacaste, Parque Nacional Rincón de la Vieja and Parque Nacional Tapantí-Macizo de La Muerte.⁵
STORY:
STORY TITLE: One name for a thousand specimens
The genus entered Western botany in 1693 through an account of the plants of Martinique, and for the next 150 years the West Indian plant now called Monstera adansonii was the only species Europe knew, grown in gardens as Dracontium pertusum.⁶ When Schott revived Adanson's name Monstera in 1830 he could not simply transfer the Linnaean epithet, because he had already used the combination Monstera pertusa for an Asian Pothos, so Dracontium pertusum became Monstera adansonii.⁶
Schott's species concept was narrow. Faced with an influx of new collections he gave each variant a name, and by 1860 his monograph carried 35 species, many of them separated by slight differences in leaf shape and texture.⁶ The 1977 revision folded most of them into a few species, and kept three of the variants inside Monstera adansonii as varieties: the typical variety in the West Indies, var. klotzschiana across the Amazon basin, and var. laniata from Nicaragua to Peru and the Guianas.⁴ Later work raised the three to subspecies, and only subsp. laniata reaches Central America, where plants from central Panama toward the Darién look more like the Brazilian subsp. blanchetii and the complex is still unresolved.⁴
In the field the species is robust and closely appressed to its host, with sterile flowers at the base of the spadix and berries capped by a hard stylar layer that falls away when they ripen; Monstera obliqua, its usual confusion, is slender, loosely attached, fertile to the base of the spadix, and has soft globose berries.⁷ Vegetatively the dry-forest form of Monstera adansonii with fenestrate leaves is the one most often mistaken for Monstera obliqua.⁴
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Monstera adansonii Schott
2. Wiener Zeitschrift für Kunst, Literatur, Theater und Mode 1830(4): 1028 (1830) — protologue.
3. iNaturalist: Monstera adansonii
7. Gonçalves 2002. Monstera obliqua vs. Monstera adansonii. Aroid-L, 13 February 2002
Additional photos by David Scherberich
Additional photos from Wikimedia Commons by Diogo Luiz, Jacob Rehage, Jacob Rehage and Jacob Rehage
