PHILODENDRON CRUENTUM
PROTOLOGUE: Philodendron cruentum , published in Nova Genera ac Species Plantarum quas in Regno Chilensi Peruviano iii (1845). The protologue is reproduced below.
DISTRIBUTION: Peru: Peru.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Translated from protologue: Stem short, rooting; leaves oblong, acute at both ends, shortly acuminate at the apex, single-nerved, obliquely striate, membranous, opaque; petiole winged, equal in length to the blade. Stem simple, an ell long, flexuous, jointed, cylindrical, often two inches thick, succulent, rooting on the bark of old trees, formed above from the sheaths of fallen petioles. Petiole semiterete, fleshy, ten inches long, winged, flattened above, sheathing with a much-thickened base; the wings linear, not reaching the blade, obcordate at the tip, broader and more fleshy toward the base. Leaf blade fifteen inches long, four and a half inches wide, ending in an acumen four lines long, stiffly membranous, pale green; midrib continuous with the petiole, slightly raised on both sides, more convex above, flat and broad beneath; both surfaces of the leaf elegantly striate with innumerable, very fine lateral veinlets that spread at an acute angle and meet in an arch right at the margin, more conspicuous in the dried leaf than in the fresh one.
INFLORESCENCE:
Translated from protologue: Spathes axillary, paired, nearly sessile, oval at the base, convolute, constricted in the middle, acute at the apex, equaling the petiole and exceeding the spadices, which are thickened below and female to about the middle. Spathe equaling the petiole or nearly sessile, or borne on a very short, sharply three-angled peduncle, leathery-fleshy, gaping only to about the middle from the acute apex, convolute beyond the middle, constricted in the middle, its walls three lines thick below, white outside, most beautifully blood-red within; the spathe seven inches long, its diameter above the base an inch and a half. Ovaries bluntly four-angled, marked with four longitudinal grooves, four-loculed; the ovules paired in each locule, their attachment to the axis undetermined.
ECOLOGY:
Found in primary forests of subandean Peru, near Cuchero and at the Tocache mission (upper Maynas) — the same locality as the previously described Philodendron heterophyllum.
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin cruentus, "bloody" or "blood-stained," presumably referring to the deep purple, glutinous sap that the protologue describes oozing from a cut spathe and staining paper a chestnut color.
NOTES:
1. Type locality: the same primary forest near Cuchero, subandean Peru, and the Tocache mission, as Philodendron heterophyllum, described immediately before it in the same work.
2. When the spathe is cut it exudes a sticky, purple sap that stains writing paper a chestnut color — presumably the source of the epithet “cruentum.” As with most species of this order, a full-sized field drawing exists, but the spadix is lacking from the herbarium material.
STORY:
STORY TITLE: A cut spathe bleeds, and the drawing that outlived the missing spadix
On his early nineteenth-century expedition through subandean Peru, the botanist Eduard Poeppig collected a short, rooting philodendron climbing the bark of old trees near Cuchero and the Tocache mission — the same primary forest where he had just gathered the plant that would be described immediately before this one, as Philodendron heterophyllum.²
When Poeppig and Endlicher published the species, they recorded that a cut spathe oozes a sticky, deep purple sap that stains writing paper a chestnut color, apparently the source of the epithet cruentum, Latin for “bloodstained.” As with most of the aroids in the collection, they noted, a full-size field drawing of the plant existed — telling, since the herbarium specimen itself had arrived without its spadix.²
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Philodendron cruentum
2. Nova Genera ac Species Plantarum quas in Regno Chilensi Peruviano iii (1845) — protologue.