As circumscribed by Paudyal et al. (2018), Salzmannia includes four species found in northern and eastern South America, and is somewhat heterogeneous morphologically. Salzmannia was characterized before their study as done by Jardim et al. (2015), with two species and by its scandent to erect, small tree habit; stem apices with a notable amount of resin; leaves without domatia and the secondary veins visible but the higher-order venation not visible; persistent, triangular to truncate stipules that are fused around the stem or to the petioles; axillary, subsessile to shortly pedunculate, subcapitate to congested-cymose inflorescences; 4-6-merous, somewhat small flowers; tubular, yellow to orange corollas with the lobes shorter than the tube and thinly imbricated; stamens inserted near the base of the corolla tube and fused at the filament bases; long slender anthers; ellipsoid to oblate, red to pink or purple fruits; and distribution in Atlantic forest vegetation in eastern and northeastern Brazil. The two species included by Jardim et al. are similar, and had been confused. Before this study, Salzmannia had been characterized as comprising only scandent shrubs, but Salzmannia arborea grows to be a medium-sized tree, up to 15 m tall. This species is notable in its dimorphic vegetative and reproductive growth, and its reproductive branches that are elongated and flexuous, and similar to the scandent growth of Salzmannia nitida.
Paudyal et al. (2018) then transferred two additional species of Chiococca to Salzmannia, and expanded the morphological variation of Salzmannia to include lax, fasiculate to racemiform and panicluliform inflorescences with well developed peduncle and pedicels; dull purple-green to white corollas, and habitat in wet forest and cloud forest up to 1400 m in northern Venezuela. They designated this "Salzmannia sensu Paudal & Delprete, emended", and characterized it by 4-5-merous flowers and two pyrenes. However, the flowers of the original two Salzmannia species were documented by Jardim et al. (2018) to often be 6-merous, and the fruits of Salzmannia plowmanii were described by Delprete (2004) as consistently having 1 pyrene. The changes made to to circumscription of Salzmannia by them were based on the addition of species and more morphological variation, but they did not exclude the type of Salzmannia or any characters previously used to diagnose it, nor include additional species with discordant characters. Therefore, the changes made by Paudyal & Delprete to the circumscription of Salzmannia are not different from changes that would result from discovery of a new species of the group, and their changes do not correspond to the nomenclatural requirements for changing the authorship of a genus name due to formal emendation (Art. 47).
The four species now included in Salzmannia show a range of inflorescence, flower, and fruit forms. The inflorescences vary from laxly branched with small bracts, to subcapitate or congested-cymose and partially enclosed by somewhat enlarged stipules, to subcapitate with foliaceous bracts. The corolla range from orange to yellow, white, or dull purplish green, and from tubular to funnelform. The fruits range from pale pink to purple or red.
The two species newly transferred from Chiococca to Salzmannia by Paudyal et al. (2018) are similar in aspect and many features to Chiococca, and the morphological separation of these genera was previously rather tenuous and is less clearly marked now. The separation of Salzmannia from Chicocca was not detailed by Paudyal et al. as they did for other genera in their study. The transfer of the two species was presented only based on the position of these species in the phylogram (2018: 383-384). Salzmannia was formally separated by them (2018: 390) based on its "sliightly to copiously resinous branches, vs. "commonly non-resinous in Chiococca; however, as noted in their characterization, some Chiococca species do produce resin at the apex, snd sometimes an appreciable amount of it (e.g., Chiococca pachyphylla). They also separated Salzmannia based on its "pink to red or purplish-blue fruits", vs. "white or yellowish white" in Chiococca; however, at least one species explicitly placed by them in Chiococca also has purple to blue-black or purple-black fruits (Chiococca nitida, Delprete 2004). Another species not studied by Paudyal et al., Chiococca insularis, is similar to Salzmannia plowmanii and found in an adjacent range (Figueira et al., 2020), and its relationships with Salzmannia (and separation from Salzmannia plowmanii) may deserve re-evaluation.
One of the species Paudyal et al. (2018) transferred, Salzmannia naiguatensis, is also quite similar morphologically to their Ramonadoxa, and perhaps closer biogeographically to that than the other Salzmannia species. Salzmannia naiguatensis shares with Ramonadoxa a similar aspect, inflorescence arrangement, and funnelform corollas described often as dull purple on the outside. Ramonadoxa was separated by them because its samples were placed in their majority rule consensus tree on a separte clade in the sister clade to Salzmannia, and Salzmannia naiguatensis was placed with the other Salzmannia species with those other species grouped with 0.94 Bayesian probability; no bootstrap numbers were given for this branch (2018: Fig. 3). The relationships of Salzmannia naiguatensis were not analyzed in detail by them, but based on their other taxonomic decisions, it seems likely that if the Bayesian support for its sister clade with the other Salzmannia species were higher they might have treated this species as a monotypic genus. They contrasted Salzmannia and Ramonadoxa (2018: 385), and distinguished Salzmannia by its resinous stem apices (vs. not resinsous in Ramonadoxa), subcapitate or shortly racemose nflorescences (vs. cymose), white, yellow, orangish yellow, or green corollas (vs. purple-brown externally and yellow internally), and distribution in South America (vs. Cuba). However, these distinctions were apparently compiled without study of Ramondadoxa specimens, which report the flowers sometimes as only yellow and appear to have resinous stem apices. These distinctions also do not separate Ramonadoxa from Salzmannia naiguatensis, which has cymose inflorescences and externally purple-green corollas. The fruit color of Ramonadoxa does not seem to have been documented. However, it is not inconceivable that further analysis could find somewhat different support for the relationships among these species and Salzmannia naiguatensis to be more closely related to Ramonadoxa than the rest of Salzmannia.
Author: C.M. Taylor.
The content of this web page was last revised on 8 April 2021.
Taylor web page: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/curators/taylor.shtml