Neil Crafter
Adelaide Australia
Julius Boos wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From:
> To: Multiple recipients of list AROID-L
> Sent: Thursday, December 13, 2001 10:46 AM
> Subject: Re: Philodendron selloum
>
> Dear Petra, Donna and Friends,
>
> In the interest of clarity, I will just give a LITTLE more information taken
> from Simon Mayo`s EXCELLENT paper, "A revision of Philodendron subgenus
> Meconostigma (Araceae)', published in the Kew Bullitin Vol. 46 ( 4 ), and
> then give my OPINION (and as we all know, opinions are like noses, EVERYONE
> has one :--)> ).
> Dr. Mayo takes great pains to point out that this is a very confused taxon,
> occuring in a WIDE area of distribution, and may consist of several species,
> some as yet undescribed. The two main ones in question are P.
> bipinnatifidium Schott 1832, and P. selloum C. Koch1853 or 1854, (some
> confusion here).
> Dr. Mayo writes as follows---'P. bipinnatifidium, as circumscribed here is a
> very variable taxon in morphology and color of leaf and inflorescence. The
> main unifying character is the bipinnatifid leaf blade'---he goes on to
> state--'Like other authors who have studied this species complex in the
> recent past'---'I have taken a broad view of the species. This seems to be
> the only practical way of dealing with taxanomic difficulties for which
> current knowledge does not provide satisfactory soloutions'. He goes on to
> explain that the original dsecription was by Schott ---(plant probably
> collected from near Rio de Janero) and that Schott`s manuscript description
> of 1884 show that his plant had a spathe tube colored purple-brown
> externally, a gynoceum with a well developed central style dome and the
> female zone adnate to the spathe for about half it`s length.
> P. selloum was described by C. Koch (to cut a long story short, it was from
> cultivated material in Berlin sent to Koch by his friend H. Sello, head
> gradener at Sans Souci, the Imperial Prussian estate at Potsdam, and Koch
> did not see fertile material). Dr. Mayo notes that the confusion between
> these two names may have it`s origin in the professional rivalry between
> Schott and Koch. Schott left illustrations in his Icones Aroideae of his
> P. bipinatifidium and P. selloum, and his illus. of P. selloum showed a
> spathe colored green externally, a pistil with a deep style funnel and NO
> central dome , and the female zone of the spadix adnate to the spathe for
> OVER half its length. Engler (1878: 170), who studied Schott`s
> illustrations, distinguished P. selloum by its green spathe tube longer than
> the spathe blade, and the entirely adnate female zone. This work by Engler
> is probably the 'why' of the two names, and when Mayo wrote this paper I am
> quoting from is when people began considering that the two species were
> synonomyous.
> Now for MY opinion ( which is like a nose, etc. etc. etc.). Based on what
> I have just detailed, I concur with Dr. Mayo that MUCH more study needs to
> be done with this complex before I can say with certainity whether there are
> two or even more species involved in this group of broadly distributed
> plants, BUT based on the features of spathe color (exterior and interior),
> size of the respective inflorescences, and especially the seemingly major
> differences in the structure of the female flowers and the length that the
> female portion of the spadix that is adnate to the spathe, that there
> probably are at LEAST two species involved here, so as it stands now P.
> bipinnatifidum and P. selloum can be distinguished one from the other, and
> in my opinion may eventually be 'ruled' to be two 'good' and different
> species.
> The plants that I have studied here in Florida all have an all-green spathe
> exterior, I have not as yet sen a plant with a purple-brown spathehe
> exterior (I THINK someone told me there were plants w/ red-brown spathes in
> collections??).
> Another 'species' that has been placed into synonomy with P. bipinnatifidium
> by in Dr Mayo`s in paper is
> P. pygmaeum Chodat & Vischer 1880 from Paraguay, I THINK I`ve seen a plant
> of this VERY distinctive small Philodendron, (any of you who were in Miami
> last Sept. may have seen me on Sat. morning wandering around with a leaf of
> this plant in my hand). There is a paper in which there must be a
> discussion on this plant, it is by Dr. Croat and D. Mount. I`d like to
> read the section about it, if anyone has a copy please contact me, it
> is--'Croat, T. B. & Mount, D. (1988) The monocotyledons- A Comparative
> Study. 378 pp., Acadamia Press, London.'
> This is a MOST interesting discussion, and Donna`s information given below
> gives me ammunition to go ask my old buddy Jim about! He will remember the
> names and ways these plants used to be sold in the 'good old days'.
> ENOUGH!
>
> Good growing,
>
> Julius Boos
> WPB,
> Florida
> ju-bo@msn.com
>
> To add to Neil's comments below and Julius' earlier about older collections
> of this species in Florida, some older FL hort books and trade publications
> listed both P. selloum and P. bipinnatifidum as distinct species. About
> 20-30
> years ago in the FL nursery trade sometimes the names were used almost in a
> varietal or even cultivar sense. During those years in the hort trade, the
> P.
> bipinnatifidum "form" was considered superior and more sought after. I seem
> to recall from my retail nursery days in the early-mid 1980s that any plant
> labeled with the name P. bipinnatifidum sold for a higher price than those
> labeled as P. selloum. Probably some unscrupulous nursery owners capitalized
> on this and labeled all their seedling plants with this name to garner a few
> more dollars, other growers actually produced cuttings taken from some
> select
> forms and gave them the P. bipinnatifidum name to distinguish them. The
> latter were far less common in cultivation and quite rightly fetched the
> highest price. Occasionally some newspaper or magazine article would
> elaborate on these plants and discuss the various points of difference
> between the two "forms" in cultivation. Afterwards customers would come in
> asking for P. bipinnatifidum and would turn up their noses at any plant
> labeled with the P. selloum name as a "common" seedling of unknown
> parentage,
> and less desirable, thus we always tried to keep a small supply of plants,
> acquired from trusted wholesale sources as cutting-grown P. bipinnatifidum,
> for our more "discriminating" buyers! In the back nursery area we kept some
> stock plants of a few superior P. bipinnatifidum forms to propagate for
> special customers, because we could not always find a wholesale source for
> the "true" P. bipinnatifidum grown only from cuttings. Later, this P.
> bipinnatifidum name became lost in the trade and all you could find were the
> uniform plants labeled as P. selloum. I guess it simply became uneconomical
> for wholesale growers to produce cuttings of those special forms, so one
> could no longer find all the variations of this species in nurseries.
>
> Donna Atwood<<
>
> << some confusion has existed in the past over P. selloum and P.
> bipinnatifidum....Engler considered them separate species. the two names
> have in the past been used to differentiate two different populations
> (Gottsberger and Amaral 1984) and In 1991 Mayo joined the two into one
> single species ....P. bippinatifidum is the true name....P. selloum has
> been
> reduced into synonomy.
> >>
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