SCINDAPSUS PICTUS

Species

PROTOLOGUE: Scindapsus pictus , published in Tijdschrift voor Natuurlijke Geschiedenis en Physiologie 9: 164 (1842). The protologue is reproduced below.

SYNONYMS:

HETEROTYPIC SYNONYMS: Pothos argenteus W.Bull; Pothos argyraeus J.Veitch f.; Pothos endresii H.J.Veitch; Scindapsus argyraeus (J.Veitch f.) Engl.; Scindapsus pictus var. argyraeus (J.Veitch f.) Engl.; Scindapsus pictus var. oblongifolius Engl.; Scindapsus pothoides Schott

DISTRIBUTION: SE. Bangladesh to W. & C. Malesia: Bangladesh, Borneo, Java, Peninsular Malaysia, Philippines, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Thailand.

DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Malaysia: Perak Indonesia: Central Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, South Kalimantan, South Sulawesi iNaturalist: Brunei, Brunei-Muara, Johor, Kuching, Laguna, Pahang, Penang, Sabah, Sandakan, Sarawak, Selangor, Sintang, West Java, West Kalimantan, West Sumatra.

SPECIES DESCRIPTION:

Small to large, moderately robust lianes. Juvenile and pre-adult stems with the leaves arranged in an overlapping (or nearly so) shingle pattern; adult stems with leaves distichously arranged. Stem long, at most scabrid, older portions with conspicuous orange-brown brittle epidermis. Leaves many; petiole ca. 2 cm long; petiolar sheath narrow; leaf blade 8–12 cm × 2–2.5 cm, ovate-cordiform (juvenile and pre-adult) to falcate (adult), adaxially matte to somewhat scintillating, medium green, usually with silvery jagged spots or with these coalescing into larger areas; primary lateral veins hardly differentiated, pinnate, running into marginal vein; higher order venation obscure.⁴

INFLORESCENCE:

Inflorescence solitary; peduncle shorter than petiole, 0.5 to 1 cm long; spathe 4–8 cm long, ovate-cuspidate, thickly leathery, white; spadix stout ca. 2 cm long, white; flowers bisexual, perigone absent; pistillate flowers, ovary sometimes short, compressed ± cylindric; stamens flowers 4, free, filaments oblong, flattened, broadish, connective slender, thecae oblong-ellipsoid, dehiscing by apical slit. Infructescence a monsterocarp ca. 7 cm long × 2.45 cm wide, pale grey-green, glaucous, stylar plates sloughing at maturity to reveal the orange pulp cavity.⁴

ECOLOGY:

Found in a variety of habitats in the lowlands to mid-elevation, almost always encountered as a juvenile shingling climber, the rarely encountered adult plants forming extensive curtains of much-branched stems pendent from the tops of tall forest trees, with the inflorescences borne on the tips of the stems.⁴

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin pictus, "painted," for the leaf blades painted with glaucous blotches, in Hasskarl's words maculis glaucis picta.²

NOTES:

1. Hasskarl's protologue of 1842 describes the plant as a parasitic climber with flexuous terete branches often hanging from the branches of trees and scabrous with dots, the leaves on sheathing petioles 1–2 inches long, ovate-lanceolate, unequal-sided and oblique, acute, cordate at the base, quite glabrous, dark green above and painted with glaucous blotches, paler and unspotted beneath, 3–5 inches long and 2–2½ inches wide; the spadix stands on a thick terete terminal peduncle 1–2 inches long, and the spathe is convolute, cylindric, acuminate, green, glabrous and shining, then yellowish green and boat-shaped, splitting from the base toward the middle and falling, thick and leathery, with the stamens included.²

2. Wong gives the range as Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, the Philippines and Sulawesi, and lists among the synonyms Pothos argenteus, Pothos argyraeus, Scindapsus argyraceus, Scindapsus pictus var. argyraeus, Scindapsus pictus var. oblongifolius and Scindapsus pothoides.⁴

3. In the key to the Peninsular Malaysian species Scindapsus pictus is the liane with cordiform, coriaceous but not markedly succulent blades, smooth and adaxially matte to somewhat scintillating, medium green and usually with silvery jagged spots that may coalesce into larger areas, and stems at most scabrid with the older portions bearing a conspicuous orange-brown, brittle epidermis; Ahmad Sofiman, Boyce and Chan note that it is produced in tens of millions for the ornamental trade and, being heteroblastic, needs regular pruning to keep the commercially desirable juvenile leaf form.⁵

4. Backer's collection 23530 from Pasir Pogor on Mount Salak in Java and plants cultivated in the Buitenzorg (Bogor) Gardens showed Alderwerelt that the typical plant and Engler's varieties oblongifolius and argyraeus may be found on the same stem: the very broad leaves with a deeply cordate base belong to the main stem and the oblong ones with a rounded base are occasionally those of the ultimate branches.⁶

5. The monograph describes the adult plant as an angular stem up to 13 m long, warty when old, with flexuous slender branchlets, petioles 2–3 cm long, leathery obliquely ovate-oblong or ovate blades 10–16 cm long and 5–8 cm wide, dark green above and painted with irregular glaucous or whitish-glaucous cloud-like blotches, paler and unspotted beneath, a stout peduncle 2–3 cm long, a thickly fleshy white ovate-oblong spathe 6–7 cm long including a cusp about 1 cm long, a spadix 5–6 cm long on a stipe scarcely 2 mm long, obpyramidal-tetragonal pistils 5 mm long with a sunken oblong stigma, and dark green berries. Engler and Krause kept two varieties: var. oblongifolius, with an oblong blade obtuse and not cordate at the base, from Kwalo Kapuas in Borneo, and var. argyraeus, which they judged rather a non-flowering juvenile form, with a proportionately broader, more deeply cordate blade spotted with silver above, from Perak, Java, Borneo and Sulawesi. Specimens are cited from Perak up to 660 m, the Batu Islands west of Sumatra, Java, Borneo and northern and southern Sulawesi.⁷

6. Hooker recorded the species from Perak (King's Collector) with a stem 6–8 ft. long, as thick as a goose-quill or more, 4–6-angled when dry through contraction of the tissues and pale red-brown, thickly coriaceous dull green leaves with very close and slender nerves, very stout peduncles equalling the petiole, a white spathe and a green spadix, and noted that the leaves of young plants are orbicular-cordate, green blotched with white; he listed Scindapsus argyraea of Engler among the synonyms.⁸

7. Boyce found that this species, unlike Scindapsus latifolius, does not shed needle-like trichosclereids from disintegrating petiolar sheaths, cataphylls and prophylls, and is vegetatively fairly typical of the genus.⁹

8. Bogner and Boyce separate Scindapsus pictus from its closest relative, Scindapsus lucens, on leaf characters: juvenile plants of Scindapsus pictus have leaves of crystalline texture with a smooth, dull grey-green blade variously marked with jagged silver-grey blotches, flowering plants have falcate leaves with little or no posterior lobe development, and the gynoecia are less depressed. They also observe that adult Scindapsus pictus and Scindapsus officinalis are remarkably similar, the variegation typical of Scindapsus pictus sometimes being lost in dried material, but differ in their gynoecia and are geographically distinct, Scindapsus pictus running from southern Thailand and northern Peninsular Malaysia through Borneo to the Philippines.¹⁰

9. The Araceae of Peninsular Malaysia gives Scindapsus pictus as its example of a hemiepiphyte that climbs high into the forest canopy and often produces enormously long, pendent flowering stems.¹¹

10. In 1925, Ridley described the species as a very long slender climber reaching 40 feet or more, its young leaves ovate to orbicular or falcate and cordate, green blotched with white, about 3 inches long on slender petioles, and its adult leaves lanceolate falcate or ovate cordate, 4.5 to 6 inches long, dull green, on stout petioles sheathing to the top; the spathe ovate, cuspidate, white and thickly leathery, 2 inches long. He recorded it as very common in forests all over the Peninsula and extending to Borneo, Java and Celebes, and took up Engler's Scindapsus argyraeus as a synonym. In 1907, he gave a stem about 20 feet long, a thick caducous spathe, and a distribution in Borneo and Java. His remark of 1925 states the plant's double life, eighty years before the point was made again in the modern literature: as it only flowers when it reaches the tops of lofty trees it is seldom collected, but young plants with their ornamental spotted leaves can be seen all over the Peninsula.¹²,¹³

STORY:

STORY TITLE: The shingling juvenile that filled the world's greenhouses

Justus Karl Hasskarl described Scindapsus pictus in 1842 from plants at the Buitenzorg garden in Java, and the epithet is his phrase for the leaves: dark green above and painted with glaucous blotches, maculis glaucis picta. Everything that has made the species a houseplant was already in that description, and everything that has confused its naming came from the fact that the plant changes as it grows. Joseph Hooker, treating it for British India in 1893, noted that the leaves of young plants are orbicular-cordate, green blotched with white, while adult stems are angled and muriculate when dry and reach 6 to 8 feet; a plant from the trade had meanwhile been named Pothos argyraeus, and Engler had called it Scindapsus argyraeus. In their 1908 monograph Engler and Krause kept var. argyraeus, with broader, more deeply cordate, silver-spotted blades, while admitting that it was probably nothing more than a non-flowering juvenile form. Alderwerelt closed the question in 1920 with a collection from Mount Salak and plants in the Buitenzorg garden that carried the broad cordate leaves on the main stem and the oblong ones of the varieties on the ultimate branches.²,⁸,⁷,⁶

In the wild the two stages lead different lives. Wong Sin Yeng writes that the species is not rare in Sarawak but is almost always met as a juvenile shingling climber, its overlapping leaves pressed to the bark; the rarely seen adults form extensive curtains of much-branched stems hanging from the tops of tall forest trees, with the inflorescences at the tips. The Araceae of Peninsular Malaysia uses it as the example of a hemiepiphyte that climbs into the canopy and lets down enormously long pendent flowering stems.⁴,¹¹

The silver-blotched juvenile is the plant grown in tens of millions for the ornamental trade, and because the species is heteroblastic the growers must keep pruning it to hold that form. William Bull listed it as Pothos argenteus in 1887, and it has never left cultivation since. Telling it from its relatives is a matter of surfaces: Scindapsus pictus has smooth, matte to somewhat scintillating medium green leaves with silvery jagged spots, and stems that are at most scabrid with an orange-brown, brittle epidermis on the older portions, whereas Scindapsus lucens has bullate, glossy leaves on warty green stems and Scindapsus treubii has smooth stems and sub-succulent, strongly oblique blades. Bogner and Boyce added that adult Scindapsus pictus and Scindapsus officinalis are remarkably alike once the variegation has faded in a dried specimen, differing in their gynoecia and in geography.⁵,⁴,¹⁰

REFERENCES:

1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Scindapsus pictus

2. Tijdschrift voor Natuurlijke Geschiedenis en Physiologie 9: 164 (1842) — protologue.

3. iNaturalist: Scindapsus pictus

4. Wong 2016. Araceae of peat swamp forests. In: Biodiversity of Tropical Peat Swamp Forests of Sarawak: 35–86

5. Ahmad Sofiman, Boyce & Chan 2010. Studies on Monstereae (Araceae) of Peninsular Malaysia III: Scindapsus lucens, a new record for Malaysia, and a key to Peninsular Malaysian Scindapsus. Gardens' Bulletin Singapore 62(1): 9–15

6. Alderwerelt van Rosenburgh 1920. New or noteworthy Malayan Araceae I. Bulletin du Jardin Botanique de Buitenzorg sér. 3, 1: 359–389

7. Engler & Krause 1908. Araceae-Monsteroideae. Das Pflanzenreich IV.23B (Heft 37): 4–139

8. Hooker 1893. Scindapsus. The Flora of British India 6: 541–543

9. Boyce 1993. A possible defense mechanism in Scindapsus latifolius (Araceae: Monsteroideae). Aroideana 16: 31–32

10. Bogner & Boyce 1994. Scindapsus lucens (Araceae: Monsteroideae), a new species related to Scindapsus pictus. Kew Bulletin 49(4): 789–792

11. Mashhor, Boyce, Ahmad Sofiman & Baharuddin 2011. The Araceae of Peninsular Malaysia. Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, Pulau Pinang