ALBERT

Description: The genus Stenandriopsis was created by S. Moore in Journ. of Bot. 44: 153. 1906 for a plant collected first by Vaughan Thompson and afterwards by Baron in an unspecified part of Madagascar. As the plate by which the description is accompanied depicts the specimen collected by Baron (n. 6708), the latter is to be regarded as the type. Stenandriopsis was referred by its author to the Justicieae, but this tribe is apparently accepted by him in the delimitation it received in BENTHAM and HOOKER’s “Genera Plantarum”, and as it is in this sense a most heterogeneous mixture, this does not greatly enlighten us. Of more importance is that Moore compares it with Crossandra Salisb. and Stenandrium Nees, i.e. with genera belonging to my subfamily Acanthoideae and referred by me respectively to the Acantheae and the Aphelandreae. However, in my paper on “The Acantheae of the Malesian Area. I. General Considerations” in Proc. Kon. Ned. Akad. v. Wetensch., Ser. c. 58: 166. 1955, I pointed out that it can not belong to the Acantheae as the corolla throat lacks the incision in the adaxial side which is characteristic for that tribe. It can not belong to the Aphelandreae either as the corolla limb is subactinomorphous instead of distinctly bilabiate. As I had to rely at that time entirely on Moore’s description and on the plate by which the latter is accompanied, I was unable to arrive at a conclusion, but I suggested that the genus might represent a new tribe of my Acanthoideae. Since then I have had the opportunity to inspect in the herbarium of the British Museum of Natural History the material on which the genus was based, for which I tender my best thanks to the Keeper, and now I am able to express a more definite opinion.

Description: The genus Praravinia was created by KORTHALS (in TEMMINCK, Verhand. Nat. Gesch. Ned. Overz. Bezitt., Bot., p. 189, tab. 41, 1839-1842) for a plant which he had collected in the south-eastern part of Borneo. He described it as similar in habit and doubtless nearly related to Urophyllum WALL. His diagnosis of the genus, however, does not substantiate this point of view, for it contains two statements which seem to exclude the possibility of a near affinity: the aestivation of the corolla lobes is described as imbricate, whereas in Urophyllum and its allies it is always valvate, and the number of corolla lobes is said to be half as large as that of the stamens, a condition unknown not only in Urophyllum but in the whole family. As in the description of the species the aestivation is correctly set down as valvate, the first statement need not trouble us: the word “imbricate” in the generic diagnosis is obviously a slip of the pen. The other statement, however, is repeated in the description of the species, but it strikes one as anomalous that immediately afterwards the 8—12 stamens are said to alternate with the corolla lobes, as this of course would be impossible when the latter were but half as numerous as the first. The discrepancy between the number of the corolla lobes and of the stamens led MIQUEL in his “Flora Indiae Batavae II, p. 225 (1857)” to consider Praravinia as a quite singular genus, rather out of place in the family Rubiaceae: it reminded him, he says, of the Samydeae (Flacourtiaceae). When he wrote this, he knew the genus merely from the description given by KORTHALS, but afterwards he found an opportunity to study the latter’s material. In his “De quibusdam Rubiaceis, Apocyneis et Asclepiadeis” (Ann. Mus. Bot. Lugd.-Bat. IV, p. 136, 1869) he proposes, as a result of this investigation, to exclude the genus from the Rubiaceae, and to raise it to family rank. The new family, for which he introduces the name Metrocladeaceae, should be regarded, however, as nearly related to the Rubiaceae. The description of the genus given by MIQUEL is much more detailed than the original one, but it unfortunately repeats its principal errors: the corolla is described as 4- to 6-merous, and its aestivation as imbricate. The male flower dissected by him is preserved in the Utrecht Herbarium; it is a fairly young bud, opened by a longitudinal slit. The corolla lobes had apparently been separated by a slight pressure, but I at once got the impression that it had been insufficient to effect a complete separation, and that the lobes were still cohering in pairs. I have boiled the flower therefore once more, and by exercising in my turn a slight pressure I succeeded in setting all the lobes free. Since then I have seen mature flowers of this and other species in which the isomery of corolla and androecium was unmistakable. MIQUEL’s speculations on the taxonomic position of the genus were based therefore on a false supposition, and need no further consideration; the analysis carried out below will show that KORTHALS was quite right when he placed Praravinia in the neighbourhood of Urophyllum.

Description: Of the family Oenotheraceae the genus Jussieua is the only one occurring in Suriname. The peculiar Oocarpon torulosum (Arn.) Urb., which has been recorded from Amazonian Peru, Brazil, British and French Guiana, Cuba and Santo Domingo, has up till now not been collected in the colony, but on account of its presence in the neighbouring countries it is there also to be expected. As for the name of the only Suriname genus, it was spelled by LINNAEUS in Genera Plantarum, ed. I (1737), p. 126, Jussieua but afterwards in his Flora Zeylanica (1747), p. 75, changed in Jussiaea.

Description: The name Pleiocarpidia was coined by K. SCHUMANN (ENGLER und PRANTL, Natürliche Pflanzenfamilien, Nachträge I, p. 314, 1897) for a genus described in 1873 by HOOKER f. (BENTHAM et HOOKER, Genera Plantarum II (1), p. 71) as Aulacodiscus: HOOKER’S genus had to be rebaptized, because the name Aulacodiscus had been used already in 1844 by EHRENBERG for a genus belonging to the Diatomeae. A proposal made by O. KUNTZE(POST et KUNTZE, Lexicon, 1904) to change the spelling of the name introduced by SCHUMANN in Pliocarpidia can not be accepted, as there is no rule prescribing the transcription of the Greek diphthong in the manner advocated by the proposer. The plant on which HOOKER’S genus was founded, a small tree not uncommon in the Malay Peninsula, had been described already several years before by WIGHT (Calc. Journ. Nat. Hist. VII, p. 144, 1847) under the name Axanthes enneandra. The specific epithet points to the presence of nine stamens in the flower, but this is exceptional: in the flowers investigated by me the ordinary number proved to be seven. The genus Axanthes Bl., to which the species had been referred by WIGHT, was reduced shortly afterwards by BENTHAM and HOOKER f. (Niger Flora,p. 396,1849) and independently by KORTHALS (Ned. Kruidk. Arch. II, 2, p. 194,1851) to Urophyllum Wall. Later HOOKER made an exception for Axanthes enneandra Wight. The flowers of this plant were described by him as 8- to 16-merous, and on account of this character and of the presence of a “peltate stigma” he referred it to a new genus. Afterwards a second species from the same region was described by KING and GAMBLE under the name Aulacodiscus Maingayi, but this proved identical with the first (cf. RIDLEY, Flora of the Malay Peninsula II, p. 64, 1923). A really new species, however, was found in Mindanao: it was described by Merrill as Pleiocarpidia lanaensis.

Description: It is commonly accepted that percentages of pollen in a pollen diagram do not express the exact composition of forests in earlier times. This inaccuracy is due to several factors, for instance the different quantities of pollen produced by plants, the distance of transport etc. A pollen diagram tells us only the change in pollen rain on the locality where we collected soil samples. In studying a pollen diagram we find a close relation between the variations in the percentages of a certain species and the area occupied by this species in the vegetation. When the percentage of pollen of a species increases, we conclude generally that the relative area occupied by this species in the vegetation increases too. However, such a connection might be doubted. The variety of factors controlling the dispersion of pollen is so great that the interpretation of a pollen diagram often meets with great difficulties. The connection between pollen rain and the composition of the vegetation is a simple one in the cases where we are dealing with a region of uniform vegetation. A diagram taken from a region in which the vegetation varies from place to place has to be regarded with some caution. Unfortunately such a heterogenity of the vegetation exists on the very place, where we want to compose a pollen diagram. The pollen rain which falls into a bog arises from two sources: a pollen rain from the local vegetation of the bog itself and one from the surrounding vegetation. When we are dealing with great bogs, the pollen produced by the vegetation of the bog itself will be mostly that of herbaceous plants, shrubs, and spores of the Bryophyta and the Pteridophyta. It is the rule rather than the exception that the bog will be treeless. The tree pollen in such a bog mostly takes its origin from the surrounding forests. It is a fortunate circumstance in a diagram that pollen of trees is separated from other pollen. However, one exception is seen in the way in which Iversen composes a diagram for late glacial times. This method, commonly used for late glacial times, embraces a pollen sum not only containing trees but also some herbaceous plants. The origin of the latter can, with some certainty, be accepted as from outside the bog. Therefore the local vegetation of the bog does not influence the percentages of tree pollen. The pollen sum thus comprises pollen of plants which grow under the same biotic conditions.

Description: Among the Acanthaceae grown in the glasshouses of the University Botanic Garden, Utrecht, a plant labelled Aphelandra velutina drew my attention, first, because it obviously belonged to an entirely different genus, and secondly, because a description under this name could nowhere be found. The coincidence of these two grounds for bewilderment might be explained by assuming that Aphelandra was merely a perversion, probably caused by the inadvertency of a transcriber, of the true generic name. This sounded plausible enough, but the name itself could not be found, for all attempts to refer the plant to one of the existing genera failed. It looked as if the plant might have been described somewhere, but for the time being there was no indication at all as to the whereabouts of this description. A clue to the origin of the name was obtained some time afterwards when I found in the Utrecht herbarium a specimen belonging to the same species which was labelled Eranthemum velutinum: the specific epithet, therefore, was the same, but the generic name was different and, as I will show presently, nearer to the mark. The specimen, which dated from 1922, had been collected by the roadside in the Buitenzorg suburb Kotta Paris, and had apparently been named by an official of the Buitenzorg Botanic Gardens. It is, however, certainly no native Javanese plant, for the flora of Java, and particularly that of Buitenzorg, is well known, and a rather conspicuous plant like this one could not have escaped the attention: it was obviously a runaway from one of the neighbouring gardens.