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(Last Modified On 1/22/2013)
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(Last Modified On 1/22/2013)
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Species
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BATOCARPUS ORINOCENSIS Karst.
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PlaceOfPublication
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Fl. Colomb. 2:67. pl. 134. 1863.
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Description
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Trees to about 10 m. in height, the young twigs slender, minutely puberulent when very immature, becoming glabrate. Leaves broadly elliptic to oval-obovate, rather abruptly subcaudate-acuminate, broadly obtuse to rounded at the base, 8-20 cm. long, 4-7 cm. broad, entire, membranaceous, glabrous, the petiole slender, about 1 cm. long; stipules about 5 mm. long, narrowly lanceolate. Staminate heads discoid, about 1 cm. in diameter, prominently involucrate with several broadly ovate minutely tomentellous bracts about 2 mm. long, the peduncle about 8 mm. long. Pistillate heads globose, about 2 cm. in diameter, the peduncle about 1 cm. long, without a definite involucre.
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Habit
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Trees
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Distribution
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Panama to Amazonian Colombia and Peru.
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Specimen
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BOCAS DEL TORO: Buena Vista Camp on Chiriqui Trail at 1250 ft., Cooper 60i.
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Note
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The staminate heads of this specimen (US) indeed superficially resemble those of Brosimum costaricanum Liebm. as originally identified, but dissection discloses the absence of the peltate bracteoles essential to Brosimum. The shape and size of the leaves and the character of the stipules agree startlingly with the excellent plate of a pistillate specimen of Batocarpus orinocensis provided by Karsten, and there appears to me no doubt concerning the identity of the two. If this be true, our specimen thus provides the first information concerning the staminate structures of the genus, known previously only from Karsten's plate and the citation of an additional pistillate specimen from Peru by Fosberg (loc cit. 1942), since the second species, Batocarpus costaricensis Standl. & L. Wms., also is known only from pistillate specimens. This view is in conflict with that of Fosberg that Batocarpus and Anonocarpus Ducke, a monotypic genus, are congeneric. Anonocarpus amazonicus Ducke (in Archiv. Jard. Bot. Rio Jan. 3:39. 1922) fortunately was described with full details of both staminate and pistillate inflorescences, the former being elongate spikes of naked 1-staminate flowers. Since the pistillate inflorescences of Bato- carpus and Anonocarpus have much in common, as noted by Ducke, it is easy to sympathize with Fosberg's impulse to merge the two. This now becomes less plausible since inflorescence structure is such an inflexible criterion of genera in Moraceae.
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