PHILODENDRON BARROSOANUM
PROTOLOGUE: Philodendron barrosoanum , published in Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 50: 23 (1964). The protologue is reproduced below.
SYNONYMS:
HETEROTYPIC SYNONYMS: Philodendron levelii G.S.Bunting; Philodendron milleri Croat
DISTRIBUTION: Venezuela to Peru: Brazil North, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: iNaturalist: Antioquia, Cundinamarca, Loreto, Orellana, San Martín, Valle del Cauca.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Translated from protologue: Climbing stem with internodes 3–6 cm long and 4 cm thick. Cataphylls about 35 cm long, marcescent. Leaf blade glossy on both surfaces, hastate-trilobed; anterior lobe ovate, about 40 cm long along the midrib, 21 cm wide at the middle, narrowing toward the apex, the apex itself acuminate or obtuse and mucronate; midrib strong, convex, with about 4 primary lateral veins on each side; lateral lobes diverging almost horizontally, obliquely elliptic-ovate, about 28 cm long, half as long as wide, narrowing toward the apices, the apices themselves obtuse, outer margins rounded at the bases, basal ribs naked for about 5 cm in a broad square-campanulate sinus. Petiole terete, up to 74 cm long, 1.6 cm thick at the middle.
INFLORESCENCE:
Translated from protologue: Inflorescences 4 or 5 from the same place. Peduncle 7–10 cm long, toward the apex with numerous dark-purple spots. Spathe up to 18 cm long, translucent toward the margin for 4–7 mm; tube somewhat inflated, about as long as the blade, outside pale green with dark-purple spots, inside rose-carmine; blade outside yellowish with numerous small red spots. Spadix equalling the spathe, shortly stipitate; staminate part 9 cm long, with the fertile part clavate and narrowing toward the base, the sterile part somewhat thicker. Pistillate flowers short, scarcely longer than thick, ovaries 8–11-locular, locules 5(4–6)-ovulate, ovules axillary, fasciculate just above the base.
ECOLOGY:
Found in forest, on a fallen trunk.
ETYMOLOGY:
Named in honor of Graziela M. Barroso, head of the Systematic Botany Section at Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro and a student of Araceae. The Latinized epithet barrosoanum means “of Barroso.”
NOTES:
1. The author preferred to designate Egler 438 as type, but the specimen, consisting of a single leaf subtending inflorescences, has narrower lateral lobes of the leaf, and the basal sinus is more spreading than in the cultivated material. The form of the sinus is an outstanding feature of the plants in cultivation.
2. Philodendron barrosoanum has been in cultivation for several years, often under the name Philodendron deflexum, to which it appears to be closely allied. Philodendron deflexum Poeppig ex Schott is a Peruvian species of very different leaf form, having an elongate-oblong anterior lobe and short, narrow lateral lobes.
STORY:
STORY TITLE: A species named for the botanist who grew its type plant
George Bunting based his 1964 description of this species mainly on plants cultivated at the Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro rather than on a single wild collection. He would have preferred to designate a specimen collected on a fallen tree trunk in Pará, by Walter Egler, as the type, but that plant’s narrower leaf lobes and more spreading basal sinus did not quite match the form seen in cultivation, so the type came instead from the living garden plants tended by Graziela Barroso, the botanist for whom Bunting named the species.²
By then the plant had already circulated for years in cultivation under the wrong name, Philodendron deflexum, a Peruvian species Bunting pointed out is actually quite different, with an elongated, oblong leading lobe and short, narrow side lobes.²
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Philodendron barrosoanum
2. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 50: 23 (1964) — protologue.