The genus Mapouria was named by Aublet for plants from French Guiana. These plants have now been shown with morphological (Taylor, 1996) and molecular (Andersson, 2002; Razafimandimbison et al., 2014) data to belong Psychotria L.; and within this large group, Aublet's species belongs to a Neotropical clade that was called for a time Psychotria subg. Psychotria, then Psychotria s. lat., and currently is just called Psychotria (e.g., Razafimandimbison et al., 2014). Psychotria is a large, complex, patropical group, and currently is circumscribed as its own tribe, Psychotrieae (Razafimandimbison et al., 2014). Mapouria was considered a synonym of Psychotria by some authors starting in the mid-1880's, but the circumscription of Psychotria has been problematic and has varied among authors so what was considered the identity of Mapouria has varied.
The circumscription used by most authors for Psychotria for a long time agreed with that of Bentham & Hooker, which was followed by Schumann (1891). Here Psychotria comprised what is now considered a heterogeneous assemblage, and included Mapouria. These authors included in Psychotria basically all the erect woody species of the tribe Psychotrieae that did not have some reproductive feature to separate them, such as the corollas with a swollen base and curved tube of Chassalia (Paleotropical) and Palicourea (Neotropical), and the capitate inflorescence enclosed in large involucrate bracts of Cephaelis. Thus Psychotria was a large genus with a lot of variation in stipule and fruit characters. However one author, Mueller (1881), differed from this view and presented a significantly different classification for the Brazilian species: he separated two groups of species based mainly on stipule and pyrene characters, which he called Mapouria and Psychotria. Also he included in Psychotria species with widely varied corolla forms and inflorescence arrangements. Mueller's classification actually agrees with our current understanding of the systematics of this group much more closely than Schumann's classification does (Taylor, 1996), except that the group Mueller called Psychotria is correctly called Palicourea and the group he called Mapouria is correctly called Psychotria. The group that Mueller called Mapouria generally corresponds to today's Psychotria, however it included some additional species that could not be separated by the characters Mueller used to diagnose his Mapouria. In particular Mueller's Mapouria thus included species that are now included in Carapichea and Margaritopsis.
Later Bremekamp (1934, 1963) reviewed Psychotria and related genera in both northeastern South America and Madagascar, using a somewhat different set of characters than previous authors had used and concluding with a different classification. Bremekamp in particular used several features of the pyrenes along with corolla and inflorescence characters to diagnose genera. As with most taxonomic studies of Psychotria and related (and similar) genera, several of Bremekamp's conclusions are supported by molecular data but others are not. Bremekamp recognized Mapouria and separated it based on its endosperm being ruminate on at least one side, vs. not ruminate in Psychotria, and he used the name Psychotria in general as Schumann did, though he did separate several genera that Schumann had included within Psychotria. In Bremekamp's circumscription Mapouria included species from the Neotropics, Africa, Madagascar, and southern Asia, and Grumilea Gaertn. was a synonym. In the Neotropics, the species with the pyrene characters of Bremekamp's Mapouria are the species of present-day Psychotria. However in the Paleotropics, there is wide variation in these pyrene features within present-day Psychotria, so here only some of these species fall into his Mapouria. Bremekamp maintained the taxonomic separation of species with ruminate endosperm from species with entire (i.e., non-ruminate) endosperm in his studies of Psychotria in Madagascar (Bremekamp, 1963). Here Bremekamp noted that apparently Psychotria and Mapouria are actually synonyms, but he stated that he considered the type of Psychotria to be heterogeneous, because two elements from two different parts of the world were cited in the protologue, and therefore he would use these as separate names until the lectotypification of Psychotria was resolved.
Bremekamp's classification has never been widely accepted. Contemporaneously with Bremekamp's work in fact, Petit (1964) was finishing a monograph of the African species of Psychotria, in which he discussed its typification and synonymized Grumilea with Psychotria. Subsequent Neotropical authors have circumscribed Psychotria subg. Psychotria (Steyermark, 1972) or Psychotria s. str. (Andersson, 2002) following to Petit, and have considered Mapouria a synonym of Psychotria. Today Psychotria is circumscribed to include species with both entire and ruminate endosperm, and the species from Madagascar that were described in Mapouria have been transferred to Psychotria (Davis et al., 2007).
The names listed on this web page correspond to Neotropical species. For the current names of Mapouria species from Madagascar, see the Madagascar Catalogue.
Author: C.M. Taylor.
The content of this web page was last revised on 16 November 2015.
Taylor web page: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/curators/taylor.shtml