AMORPHOPHALLUS LACOURII
PROTOLOGUE: Amorphophallus lacourii Linden & André, published in Ill. Hort. 25: t. 316 (1878). The protologue is reproduced below.
SYNONYMS:
HOMOTYPIC SYNONYMS: Pseudodracontium lacourii (Linden & André) N.E.Br. in J. Bot. 20: 190 (1882)
HETEROTYPIC SYNONYMS: Amorphophallus latifolius (Serebryanyi) Hett. & Claudel in Aroideana 35: 43 (2012) Pseudodracontium anomalum N.E.Br. in J. Bot. 20: 193 (1881) Pseudodracontium latifolium Serebryanyi in Blumea 40: 231 (1995) Pseudodracontium siamense Gagnep. in H.Lecomte, Fl. Indo-Chine 6: 1156 (1942), no Latin descr.
DISTRIBUTION: Indo-China: Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: The type was collected on Phu Quoc Island in 1872. Thailand: Trat, Phitsanulok, Chonburi, Chiang Mai and Songkhla Provinces; Cambodia: incl. Pursat and the Kreh Forest; Laos; Vietnam: the Tay Nguyen plateau (An Khe) and the south, incl. Con Dao and the limestone hills east of Vung Tau.⁵.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Flowering plant with 1-3 leaves. Tuber strongly elongate, up to 25 cm long. Vegetative parts extremely variable in colour; petiole up to 50-55(-60) cm long, 2 cm diam. at the base (in the wild mostly only 0.5-1 cm diam.), those with variegated leaf blades with white, brown, black, yellowish, and green spots and blotches, those with green leaf blades with a pinkish ground colour, consisting of numerous parallel longitudinal stripes and with several dark green or brown spots throughout and a distinct green blotch at the top; anterior main segment undivided (then with a petiolule of up to 5 cm long) or consisting of 3 'leaflets', the largest broadly lanceolate to broadly ovoid, up to 35 × 11 cm (in the wild usually smaller, lanceolate, 10-17 × 4-5 cm), or occasionally strongly dissected with up to 10-12 'leaflets'; posterior main segments 20-48 cm long, consisting of 5-9 'leaflets' (occasionally more), these ovate, broadly ovoid or ovate-lanceolate, (5-)7-15 × 3-5 cm; 'leaflets' glossy dark green, both surfaces with numerous, scattered, more or less rounded white or yellowish white spots or entirely green.⁵
INFLORESCENCE:
Peduncle as petiole but usually paler, about as long as petiole (slightly longer or shorter), up to 61 cm long (usually shorter). Spathe cymbiform, ± fornicate, (long) apiculate at the apex, 8-12 cm long, to 6 cm diam., outside green or pale green, inside pale green, on both sides with a few small, rounded, white spots, outside with a waxy layer, base within slightly darker, with numerous punctiform warts. Spadix almost as long as spathe, white; female zone cylindric or slightly conic, (0.7-)1-2.7 cm long, to 1.1 cm diam., flowers congested; male zone ± obconic, 3-3.5 cm long, 1-1.9 cm diam., flowers close in lower part, more distant at top; appendix mostly stipitate (stipe 0.4-1.2 cm long), more or less conic, distinctly thinner than the male zone, 2-4.3 cm long, to 1.8 cm diam. at the base, entirely brain-like or brain-like with short convolutions and a few papillae arranged in short vertical structures (appendix morphology extremely variable in one plant in different years). Ovaries white, to 2.5 mm diam., ± prismatic in cross section; style short but distinct, 0.5-0.6 mm; stigma almost punctiform (sub-hemispheric), very thin, less than 5 mm diam., surface minutely scabrate. Male flowers extremely variable in one plant in different years, consisting of 3-7 stamens, mostly 5; filaments almost always connate except in the lowermost flowers, often forming column-like structures; anthers free to irregularly connate; sometimes all stamens fused into true synandria. Mature berries and seeds not seen.⁵
ECOLOGY:
Occurs as dense populations of up to 25 m² with the leaves forming a continuous cover; the plants in each population are aggregated in clusters, and populations may contain up to 100 individuals. Individuals with different colour patterns grow in separate populations; they never mix or form intermediate zones between populations.⁵
ETYMOLOGY:
Named for Contest-Lacour, botanist-horticulturist of the French government in India, stationed at Pondicherry and on Phu Quoc Island, who collected the living type plant on Phu Quoc in 1872 and shipped it to Linden in Europe.²
NOTES:
1. Amorphophallus lacourii is an extremely variable species, both in vegetative and generative characters. One plant may produce surprisingly different inflorescences in different years, and one cultivated specimen developed no less than four inflorescences in 1994. The species can generally be characterized by its multi-coloured petioles and peduncles, often variegated 'leaflets', a relatively small spadix equalling the spathe, female flowers with near punctiform stigmas on distinct styles, and a more or less brain-like appendix on a long naked stipe.⁵
2. The species was described in 1878 from foliage alone — the plants sent from Phu Quoc had not yet flowered.² When N.E. Brown saw the flowers four years later, he made it the type of a new genus, Pseudodracontium.⁸ The genus stood for 130 years until molecular and morphological evidence showed it to be nested within Amorphophallus, and the species returned to its original name.⁶ It now gives its name to the Amorphophallus lacourii complex, a group of about five species from Vietnam and neighbouring countries currently being studied with molecular genetic data, inter-population variability, distribution, and habitat patterns.⁷
3. The type of Pseudodracontium anomalum completely agrees with the type and diagnosis of Amorphophallus lacourii, and the specimens Gagnepain cited under Pseudodracontium siamense represent some of the easily distinguishable forms within the species' variation.⁵
STORY:
STORY TITLE: Described before it ever flowered
In 1872, Contest-Lacour — botanist-horticulturist of the French government, stationed at Pondicherry and on the island of Phu Quoc — shipped a living aroid from Phu Quoc to the great Linden nursery in Belgium. Its leaves were spotted white like a Dieffenbachia, and on foliage alone Linden and Édouard André named it Amorphophallus lacourii in 1878, chromolithograph plate and all, frankly admitting their description was incomplete: the plants had not yet flowered. André offered it to readers as a beautiful ornamental, with the wish that it prove as hardy as Amorphophallus rivieri — the plant the world now calls konjac. The collector fared worse than his plant: André records that Contest-Lacour returned to Europe with his health profoundly broken by the "murderous climate" in which he had botanised.
Then the flowers came, and the trouble began. When N.E. Brown of Kew saw the strange spadix in 1882 — male flowers fused into synandria, an appendix of irregular staminodes on a naked stipe — he decided it could not be an Amorphophallus at all, and made it the type of a new genus, Pseudodracontium. There it stayed for 130 years, through a full revision in 1995, until molecular evidence showed that Pseudodracontium sat comfortably inside Amorphophallus all along. In 2012 the species came home to its original name.
It repaid the attention with sheer changeability. One plant can produce startlingly different inflorescences in different years; the appendix runs from brain-like to nearly smooth; populations of up to a hundred plants carpet the forest floor, each population keeping its own colour pattern, never mixing. Today the species presides over the Amorphophallus lacourii complex, a knot of look-alike species from Vietnam and its neighbours that molecular work is still untangling — a fitting afterlife for a plant that has resisted tidy definition since before it first flowered.
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Amorphophallus lacourii Linden & André
2. Ill. Hort. 25: t. 316 (1878) — protologue.
3. Alan Galloway — Amorphophallus lacourii, alangallowaybotanicals.com.
4. iNaturalist: Amorphophallus lacourii
5. A taxonomic revision of Pseudodracontium (Araceae). Blumea 40(1): 217-235 (1995)
6. The End of Pseudodracontium. Aroideana 35: 40 (2012)
9. Das Pflanzenreich IV.23c (Araceae-Lasioideae), Fig. 23: 60 (1911)
Additional photos by Craig Allen