A new orange-fruited species of Monstera (Araceae: Monsteroideae) from Panama
From Firenze University Press Journal: Journal of Plant Taxonomy and Geography (Webbia)
Marco Cedeño-Fonseca, Herbario Luis Fournier Origgi (USJ), Universidad de Costa Rica
Orlando O. Ortíz, Herbario PMA & Departamento de Botánica, Universidad de Panamá
Alejandro Zuluaga, Departamento de Biología, Universidad del Valle
Mario Jiménez-Segura, Macaw Recovery Networ.
Thomas B. Croat, Missouri Botanical Garden
Monstera alcirana, endemic to Panamá, is described and illustrated using a color plate based on photographs of the vegetative and reproductive structures of liv-ing material. This species is the fourth of the very small species of Monstera in Central America. It is morphologically similar to M. obliqua, M. minima and M. gambensis but differs by has short internodes, thickly coriaceous blade and peduncle longer than the length of the leaf .
Monstera, a climbing aroid genus best known for its often perforated leaf blades, remains rather poorly understood in the Neotropics as a whole, though progress has recently been made for Mexico and Central America (Grayum 2003; Cedeño-Fonseca 2019; Cedeño-Fonseca et al. 2018, 2020a, 2020b), including the recent publication of several new species in the region: Monstera anomala Zuluaga & Croat, M. integrifolia Zuluaga & Croat, M. limitaris M. Cedeño, M. guzmanjacobiae Díaz Jim., M. Cedeño, Zuluaga & Agu-ilar-Rodr., M. croatii M. Cedeño & A. Hay and M. gambensis M. Cedeño & M.A. Blanco (Cedeño-Fonseca et al. 2018; Zuluaga & Cameron 2018; Cedeño et al. 2020b; Díaz-Jiménez et al. 2020).
Costa Rica and Panama are the centre of diversity of the genus, principally in the Talamanca mountain range below 2300 m elevation (Madison 1977; Cedeño-Fonseca et al. 2020a), and particu-larly the Caribbean slope.Hitherto, Monstera obliqua Miq., was the only known species in Costa Rica and Panama with an orange fruiting spadix (Madison 1977; Grayum 2003; Cedeño-Fonseca 2019).
This species is most common from the south of Panama, mainly in the Chocó biogeographic region, and throughout the Amazon basin, where orange spadix is more frequent in the genus (Madison 1977).
Other species with orange fruiting spadix are Monstera praetermissa E.G. Gonç. & Temponi, endemic to Bahia, Brazil (Gonçalves & Tempo-ni 2004), and Monstera xanthospatha Madison endemic to the Cordillera Occidental and the Cordillera Central of the Andes in Colombia (Madison 1977).
Monstera obliqua itself appears to be a large and variable species complex with orange fruiting spadices. Most prob-ably some populations of M. obliqua in the Amazonian basin might be resolved as separate species with further research.Here we describe and illustrate a new species endemic from Panama with an orange fruiting spadix, and we include an extensive documentation of the populations of M. obliqua in Costa Rica and Panama.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/jopt-9680
Read Full Text: https://oaj.fupress.net/index.php/webbia/article/view/9680
