PHILODENDRON COLOMBIANUM
PROTOLOGUE: Philodendron colombianum , published in Botanical Museum Leaflets 18: 121 (1958). The protologue is reproduced below.
DISTRIBUTION: Colombia to N. Peru: Colombia, Ecuador, Peru.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Translated from protologue: Herb growing in humid places, up to 1½ feet tall. Leaves ovate, gradually cuspidate-acuminate at the apex, cordate at the base, up to 20 cm long, 10 cm wide, with lateral veins ascending from the midrib at an angle of about 30°, joined toward the margin; petiole callused toward the apex, more or less 18 cm long, terete, sheathed below.
INFLORESCENCE:
Translated from protologue: Peduncle enclosed at the base in fibrous bracts, more or less 9 cm long, 2 mm in diameter. Spathe subacute at the apex, white inside but purplish outside, 5 cm long, 3.5 cm wide; tube ventricose, strongly contracted at the throat, 3.5 cm long, 1–1.5 cm in diameter. Spadix stipitate, borne on a stalk 5–6 mm long, up to 6 cm long. Female part of the inflorescence 2.5 cm long, more or less 11 mm in diameter; male part 2.4 cm long. Stamens 1 mm long, 1.2 mm wide. Pistil 1–1.2 mm long, 0.3 mm in diameter. Ovary four- or five-loculed.
ECOLOGY:
Found in humid places at about 900 feet (ca. 275 m) elevation near the Río Apaporis at Soratama, above the mouth of the Río Kananarí, in the former Comisarías del Amazonas y Vaupés, Colombian Amazon.
ETYMOLOGY:
The protologue does not explain the epithet. Colombianum is the Latin adjectival form of Colombia, the country where the type was collected by Schultes and Cabrera along the Río Apaporis in the Colombian Amazon.
NOTES:
1. Type locality: Soratama, on the Río Apaporis above the mouth of the Río Kananarí — at the time in the Comisarías del Amazonas y Vaupés, national territories that Colombia's 1991 constitution reorganized into the present-day departments of Amazonas, Vaupés and Guainía.
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Philodendron colombianum
2. Botanical Museum Leaflets 18: 121 (1958) — protologue.