AMORPHOPHALLUS BECCARII

Species

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION:

Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie V.1 (1881) P.182

SYNONYMS:

HOMOTYPIC SYNONYMS: N/A

HETEROTYPIC SYNONYMS: Amorphophallus cobra Alderw. in Bull. Jard. Bot. Buitenzorg, sér. 3, 4: 165 (1922)

ACCEPTED INFRASPECIFICS: N/A

DISTRIBUTION: Indonesia | Sumatra

CLIMATE: N/A

ECOLOGY: N/A

SPECIES DESCRIPTION:

Tuber depressed, with raised areas, up to ca. 10 cm in diam., ca. 7 cm high, reddish, no offset development. Leaf solitary; petiole up to ca. 90 cm long, ca. 2 cm in diam., smooth, turgid, glossy dark brown, at the base marbled with whitish spots, these upwards larger, elongate elliptic and with a brown center, the top together with the bases of the three main branches may be developed into an intercalary bulbil; lamina ca. 90 cm in diam.; leaflets elongate-elliptic, 16–28 cm long, 6–7 cm in diam., acuminate, somewhat leathery, upper surface slightly glossy, green or dark green, apex reddish brown, lower surface green with brownish veins and margin.

INFLORESCENCE:

Inflorescence solitary, long-peduncled; peduncle as petiole or paler in all parts, 25–62 cm long, 0.6–1.5 cm in diam.; spathe erect in small specimens but in large specimens hanging over the appendix, ± cymbiform, 7–17 cm long, 4–8 cm in diam., elongate-triangular, top acutish, outside pale green with some faint purplish flushes, to the margin whitish green to whitish, inside dirty pale whitish green, the central lower part of the limb purple with rounded, whitish spots, the base dark maroon, the upper part of the base with paler purple warts, to the base confluent, forming a dense ridged-corrugate pattern, ridges mostly longitudinally arranged and their upper parts dirty white. Spadix sessile, slightly (small specimens) or distinctly shorter than spathe, 5.5–11 cm long.

The spathe coloration for this species is heterogenous, ranging from light greenish white to deep speckled red.

VARIEGATED FORMS: N/A

ETYMOLOGY: The species epithet beccarii refers to Odoardo Beccari, an Italian naturalist who discovered the titan arum (Amorphophallus titanum), the plant with the largest unbranched inflorescence in the world, in Sumatra in 1878. This botanist is denoted by the author abbreviation Becc.

NOTES:‍ ‍Amorphophallus beccarii is member of a small, exclusively Sumatran group of species with a very confusing taxonomy, due to the loss or poor preservation of most of the type specimens. Amorphophallus beccarii stands out due to its overhanging spathe and large, egg-shaped appendix.

CULTIVARS: N/A

HYBRIDS: N/A