SCINDAPSUS GRANDIFOLIUS
PROTOLOGUE: Scindapsus grandifolius , published in Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 25: 13 (1898). The protologue is reproduced below.
SYNONYMS:
HOMOTYPIC SYNONYMS: Epipremnum grandifolium (Engl.) Engl.
DISTRIBUTION: Malesia (?): Malesia (?).
Doubtfully present in Malesia (per POWO).
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Translated from protologue: Petiole sheathed far beyond the middle but not up to the geniculum, as long as the blade or longer, with a rather long, slightly channeled geniculum; blade lanceolate, unequal-sided and somewhat falcate, the midrib slightly curved upward, the lateral veins numerous, equal, spreading and slightly curved upward. Petiole nearly 40 cm long including the geniculum of 2–3 cm, the sheath about 1 cm wide on each side below and narrowed upward; blade about 45 cm long and 15 cm wide at the middle, the very numerous lateral veins 1 mm apart.²
INFLORESCENCE:
Translated from protologue: Spathe oblong, shortly acuminate, about 12 cm long and 2.5 cm wide. Spadix sessile, 12 cm long and 2.5 cm thick in flower. Filaments of the stamens broadly linear, the ovate anthers scarcely wider than the filaments and dehiscing laterally. Pistils somewhat top-shaped, hexagonal above, about 7 mm long and 4 mm in diameter at the apex, the locule half as long as the pistil, the suborbicular stigma raised out of the hollow of the apex; ovule attached at the base by a short funicle. Berries about 12 mm long. Seed obovate-reniform, slightly compressed, smooth, 5 mm long and 3 mm wide.²
ETYMOLOGY:
From Latin grandis, "large," and folium, "leaf," for the blade about 45 cm long on a petiole nearly as long.²
NOTES:
1. Engler described the species from a plant received from the Bogor Botanic Garden in 1896 without any wild locality, and the origin of the species remains unknown.²
2. Boyce reinstated the species in Scindapsus in 1998. Engler had placed it there in 1898 on the strength of its single basal ovule and more or less straight embryo, but after finding the seeds of spirit material collected at Bogor in 1906 to be albuminous he transferred it to Epipremnum in 1908, when Scindapsus was held to have exalbuminous seeds; Seubert's studies of aroid seeds showed in 1993 that Scindapsus seeds do contain small quantities of endosperm, which removed the basis of the transfer. The type, a plant cultivated at Bogor, was destroyed at Berlin.³
STORY:
STORY TITLE: Engler against Engler
Adolf Engler described Scindapsus grandifolius in 1898 from a plant received from the Bogor garden two years earlier, without a wild locality, and placed it in Scindapsus on the strength of the characters that matter in the tribe: a single ovule on a basal placenta and a more or less straight embryo. Then he visited Bogor in 1906, collected inflorescences into spirit, and found that the seeds contained albumen. At that time Scindapsus was held to have exalbuminous seeds and Epipremnum albuminous ones, and in the monograph of 1908 Engler moved his own species to Epipremnum, putting more weight on the albumen than on the pistil characters by which Epipremnum grandifolium sat awkwardly in that genus.²,³
The transfer lasted ninety years. When Peter Boyce revised Epipremnum for western and central Malesia in 1998 he could point to Seubert's 1993 study of aroid seeds, which had shown that Scindapsus seeds do contain small quantities of endosperm; the ground for Engler's second thought had gone, and Scindapsus grandifolius was reinstated. Boyce added that the same evidence, together with Epipremnum species that habitually abort all but one ovule, had much weakened the case for keeping the two genera apart at all. The type, the Bogor plant in the Berlin herbarium, was destroyed in the war, and the species is still known only from Engler's account: a lanceolate, somewhat falcate blade about 45 cm long on a petiole nearly as long, a spathe 12 cm long, and a smooth kidney-shaped seed 5 mm long. Where it grew wild is unknown.³,²
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Scindapsus grandifolius
2. Engler 1898. Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Araceae VII. Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie 25: 13 — protologue.