SCINDAPSUS CORIACEUS
PROTOLOGUE: Scindapsus coriaceus , published in Bullettino della Reale Società Toscana di Orticultura 4: 271 (1879).
SYNONYMS:
HETEROTYPIC SYNONYMS: Scindapsus borneensis Engl. & K.Krause
DISTRIBUTION: Borneo: Borneo.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Malaysia: Sarawak.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Medium sized scandent or climbing herbs. Stem terete, smooth. Leaves often forming tufts of foliage at the tips of active shoots with the preceding leaves scattered; petiole 5–10 cm long, pulvinate apically; petiolar sheath extending to the petiole tip, marcescent, degrading to fibres; leaf blade narrowly elliptic, oblique, oblong-lanceolate, stiffly coriaceous; primary lateral veins hardly differentiated from the interprimaries, pinnate, running into marginal vein, all other venation obscure.³
INFLORESCENCE:
Inflorescence always solitary; peduncle shorter than petiole; spathe boat-shaped, white to yellow, gaping at anthesis; spadix cylindric, a little shorter than spathe; flowers bisexual, perigone absent; pistillate flowers, ovary short, compressed; staminate flowers 4, free. Fruits berry.³
ECOLOGY:
Found on raised podzols in peat swamp forest and in kerangas.³
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin coriaceus, "leathery," for the stiffly leathery leaf blades that Engler described.⁵
NOTES:
1. The protologue in the Bullettino della Reale Società Toscana di Orticultura for 1879 includes Scindapsus coriacea as no. 29 on page 271.²
2. Wong treats the species as endemic to Borneo and remarks that Scindapsus coriaceus is a species complex; she recalls that the genus has not been revised in its entirety since 1908 and was last treated for Malaysia by Ridley, who recognized five species, to which fieldwork since has added Scindapsus treubii, widespread from Sumatra to Borneo, and Scindapsus lucens.³
3. Engler and Krause listed the species last, as imperfectly known, from Beccari's Sarawak collection 1671: a stout stem about 1 cm thick with very short internodes, crowded leaves on petioles 10–12 cm long sheathed almost to the base of the geniculum by a persistent, dry, scarious sheath, leathery lanceolate blades 12–15 cm long and about 3 cm wide with very numerous, very dense, fine, parallel and slightly prominent veins, and only the note on the label that the spathe is milk-white.⁴
4. Engler had seen neither spathe nor spadix but assigned the plant to Scindapsus without hesitation because the structure of its petiole and sheath closely matched the preceding species; his account gives very short internodes, crowded leaves on petioles 10–12 cm long with a dry scarious sheath 9–10 cm long, broad below and narrowed upward, a geniculum about 5 mm long, and a leathery lanceolate blade 12–15 cm long and 3 cm wide with all the veins fine, parallel and slightly prominent, together with the label's note of a milk-white spathe.⁵
5. Ridley's enumeration of the aroids of Borneo lists the species only from Beccari's Sarawak collection.⁶
6. Kartini, Siva Rohgini and Boyce define the informal Scindapsus Coriaceus Complex around this species: thickly coriaceous leaf blades with all venation rather obscure or at most the primary lateral veins visible, smooth stems, a semi-terrestrial to scandent shrubby habit that is at most low-climbing, a marked preference for exposed situations in kerangas, and solitary inflorescences with a thick to very thick leathery spathe. The complex is pre-eminently Bornean, with only Scindapsus scortechinii occurring outside Borneo; the seven described species are Scindapsus borneensis, Scindapsus coriaceus, Scindapsus kinabaluensis, Scindapsus longipes, Scindapsus rupestris, Scindapsus scortechinii and Scindapsus sumatranus, and fieldwork in Sabah, Sarawak and Kalimantan shows the complex to be manifestly under-described.⁷
7. Boyce and Wong note that the almost shrubby secondary hemiepiphytes of the Scindapsus coriaceus complex, in which many of the undescribed Malesian species occur, often grow in full sun in ridge-top kerangas forest, whereas the genus as a whole favours well-drained perhumid to everwet broadleaf forest at low to mid elevations.⁸
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Scindapsus coriaceus
2. Bullettino della Reale Società Toscana di Orticultura 4: 271 (1879) — protologue.
4. Engler & Krause 1908. Araceae-Monsteroideae. Das Pflanzenreich IV.23B (Heft 37): 4–139
5. Engler 1882. Aracee della Malesia e della Papuasia raccolte da O. Beccari. Malesia 1: 259–302
8. Boyce & Wong 2015. Compendium Genera Aracearum Malesianum. Aroideana 38E(1): 40–177
Additional photos by Patrick Blanc
Additional photos by David Scherberich