AMORPHOPHALLUS MYSORENSIS
PROTOLOGUE: Amorphophallus mysorensis E.Barnes & C.E.C.Fisch., published in Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information KEW 1939 (Issue 5) P.661.
Amorphophallus mysorensis E. Barnes et C. E. C. Fischer sp. nov. Amorphophallus silvatico (Roxb.) Kunth affinis, sed planta major, segmento mediano foliorum dichotomo, petiolis olivaceis et nigro-maculatis, foliolis linearibus vel lineari-lanceolatis, spatha majore purpurea, organis neutris 1-3-seriatis globosis, appendice breviore purpurea differt. — Type: MYSORE, Billigirirangan Hills, Western slopes, 3rd mile on Punjur Ghat in stony ground under shade of bamboos, 1260 m, fls. April, E. Barnes 2133 (Type in Kew Herb.).
SYNONYMS:
ACCEPTED INFRASPECIFICS: Amorphophallus mysorensis var. bhandarensis (S.R.Yadav, Kahalkar & Bhuskute) Sivad. & Jaleel Amorphophallus mysorensis var. mysorensis
DISTRIBUTION: W. & NE. India: India.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: India: Karnataka, in the Billigirirangan Hills of the former Mysore district, and Odisha, in the Gandahati beat of the Mahendra range in the Paralakhemundi forest division of the Eastern Ghats. The Odisha population, found in 2020, is the second locality ever recorded and lies far from the type locality.⁵.
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Tuber depressed-globose, cream colored, 2.5-9 cm in diam., 2-5 cm thick in vegetative phase; ca. 8.5 cm diam., 3 cm thick in flowering phase. Petiole cylindric, smooth, 37.5-54 cm long, 0.5-1.5 cm diam. at base, slightly tapering to the tip, pale greenish with dark olive-green and brownish black mottlings, paler towards the tip portion, extreme base whitish or pale pink in color; leaflets sessile, linear-lanceolate, acuminate at apex and decurrent at base, large leaflets 9-18.5 cm long, ca. 1.8 cm broad, small leaflets 1.8-4 cm long, ca. 0.8 cm broad, light green above and paler below, lateral nerves 7-11 pairs, distally uniting into a sub-marginal vein.³
INFLORESCENCE:
Inflorescence with peduncle slender, smooth, ca. 63 cm long, ca. 1 cm diam. at base, gradually narrowed to the tip, identical with petiole in color and pattern of stripes; spathe erect, broadly ovate, ca. 12.5 cm long, 12 cm broad; tip acute, fully convolute, ca. 4.5 cm diam. at base; limb not differentiated; dull purplish in color outside with numerous fine raised, parallel veins; purplish within at top; dark purplish and verrucose at base. Spadix longer than the spathe, ca. 18 cm long, stipitate, stipe ca. 0.6 cm long; female zone ca. 2 cm long, 1.2 cm diam.; male zone ca. 5.8 cm long, 1 cm diam.; neutral zone between male and female zones ca. 1 cm long; terminal sterile appendix ca. 8.5 cm long, 0.7 cm diam. at base and narrowed to the tip. Female flowers closely arranged; ovary spherical, ca. 2 mm diam., yellowish green, 2-4-locular, each locule with single basal anatropous ovule; stigma sessile, 2-4-lobed, pale yellow. Neutral flowers closely arranged, each spherical, brownish red, glossy, ca. 0.6 cm diam. Male flowers closely arranged, each ca. 1.75 mm high, 4-celled, opening by 2 apical elongated pores, yellowish flushed with red along the connective. Spadix-appendix cylindrical, tapering towards the tip, dark purplish, inconspicuously irregularly furrowed at the base, smooth above, becoming warty and wrinkled after anthesis.³
ECOLOGY:
Found in stony ground under the shade of bamboos at about 1200-1260 m at the type locality.² In Odisha it grows in shaded places in moist deciduous forest, alongside Byttneria herbacea, Chromolaena odorata, Helicteres isora, Ixora pavetta and Sida cordata.⁵ Flowering is recorded as March to April in Karnataka⁴ and May to June in Odisha.⁵
ETYMOLOGY:
Named for the erstwhile Mysore State — today's Karnataka — in whose Billigirirangan Hills Barnes gathered the type in April 1939.²
NOTES:
1. Amorphophallus mysorensis was rediscovered at its type locality in the Billigirirangan Hills more than 60 years after Barnes's original 1939 gatherings: plants collected in the vegetative stage in September 1999 were grown at the Calicut University Botanical Garden, where two flowered in March 2000 and confirmed the identity of the species.³
2. Barnes noted that the inflorescence appears before the leaf and that the female flowers mature earlier than the males on the same spadix; a tuber appears to produce a leaf each year for several years before an inflorescence is produced, and thereafter does not produce a leaf that season.²
3. The species belongs to sect. Rhaphiophallus; the protologue of Amorphophallus konkanensis separates that species from Amorphophallus mysorensis by its semi-flattened staminodes and basal placentation.⁴
4. ⚠ The species was once written off. Sivadasan listed it as presumed extinct in India in 1983, and it stayed that way until it was refound at the type locality in 1999.⁵
5. It was found in Odisha in June 2020, during an assessment of cyclone-damaged red sanders plantations — the first record anywhere beyond the Billigirirangan Hills, and a considerable extension eastward into the Eastern Ghats.⁵
6. ⚠ The Odisha plants are not quite typical: their spathe apex is bilobed, where the type material has an acute one. The authors who found them put this down to soil and climate rather than proposing a new taxon.⁵
7. Two varieties are recognised. Var. mysorensis has a dull purplish spathe, globose brownish-red neuter flowers and a dark purplish appendix about 8.5 cm long, blunt at the tip; var. bhandarensis has a brownish pale green spathe with prominent vertical veins, rhomboid-conical neuter flowers usually purple at the apex, and a pale yellow appendix only 3.5-4 cm long with a pointed tip.⁴
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Amorphophallus mysorensis E.Barnes & C.E.C.Fisch.
2. Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information KEW 1939 (Issue 5) P.661 — protologue.