SCINDAPSUS SUFFRUTICOSUS

PROTOLOGUE: Scindapsus suffruticosus , published in Bulletin du Jardin Botanique de Buitenzorg ser. 3, 4: 226 (1922). The protologue is reproduced below.

DISTRIBUTION: Sumatera: Sumatra.

DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Indonesia: North Sumatra.

SPECIES DESCRIPTION:

Translated from protologue: A subshrubby plant, sending out shortly creeping stolons that ascend at the apex, 20 cm high, up to 75 cm high including the leaves. Petiole 15–27.5 cm long, channeled, sheathed up to or nearly up to the geniculum, which is about 1 cm long; sheath scarious-leathery, partly deciduous and partly persistent; blade leathery, oblanceolate, about 30–36 × 8–12 cm, broadest a little above the middle, not strongly unequal-sided, base acute, apex acuminate and shortly channeled-apiculate; veins ascending, curved upward toward the apex, prominent on both surfaces when dry, not strongly differentiated above but distinctly so beneath; primary veins up to 10–14 on each side, with usually 5–7 finer secondary and tertiary veins between them.²

INFLORESCENCE:

Translated from protologue: Peduncle 12.5 cm long or perhaps longer. Spathe at first pale green, finally pale yellowish, caducous. Spadix very shortly and scarcely stipitate, cylindric, 5–7.5 cm long, rounded at the apex, pale green to pale yellowish in flower, 1.25 cm thick and thicker in fruit; ovaries compressed at the base, prismatic above, 4 mm long, peltately thickened at the apex when dry, 6-angled, 1.5–2 mm thick, flattened, sharply margined, furnished between the style and the margin with round warts that here and there run together; the uppermost ovaries sterile; style small, shortly and thickly conoid; stigma very small, oblong or here and there round or punctiform; berries a little longer than the pistils, swollen in the middle; seed obliquely obovoid-oblong, erect, slightly curved, attached laterally to the funicle.²

ECOLOGY:

Found on a dry mountain ridge in open forest at Sibolangit in the Deli region of North Sumatra, at about 400 m.² altitude: 400 m

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin suffruticosus, "subshrubby," presumably for the habit: a plant of short creeping stolons that ascend at the tips, rather than a climber; Alderwerelt did not explain the name.²

NOTES:

1. Boyce and Wong list the species among those described after Engler and Krause's monograph of 1908, the last revision of the genus, and note that there is no modern account of Scindapsus and that many of its species are known only from fragmentary collections.³

REFERENCES:

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

2. Bulletin du Jardin Botanique de Buitenzorg ser. 3, 4: 226 (1922) — protologue.

3. Boyce & Wong 2015. Compendium Genera Aracearum Malesianum. Aroideana 38E(1): 40–177