A new Homalomena species (Araceae) from Vietnam

Publication Type:Journal Article
Year of Publication:2008
Authors:Bogner, J., NGUYEN V. A. N. D. U.
Journal:Willdenowia. Mitteilungen aus dem Botanischen Garten und Museum Berlin-Dahlem. Berlin-Dahlem
Volume:38
Start Page:527
Pagination:531
ISSN:0511-9618
Keywords:aroids, chromosome number, Homalomena vietnamensis, palynology, taxonomy
Abstract:

Homalomena vietnamensis from Vietnam is described as a species new to science and illustrated. It belongs to H. sect. Homalomena and differs from other species mainly by having leaf blades with a truncate to obtuse base, a non-constricted, rather thick spathe and a slender, subcylindric staminode in each female flower. A chromosome number of 2n = 38 was counted in root tip mitoses.

URL:http://dx.doi.org/10.3372/wi.38.38212
DOI:10.3372/wi.38.38212
Full Text

During an expedition carried out by Josef Bogner, Peter Boyce, Mary Sizemore and Van Du Nguyen in 1997 a sterile Homalomena species was collected in the Bach Ma National Park in central Vietnam. Living plants brought back to Germany flowered later in cultivation in the Botanic Garden Munich regularly but the plants were indeterminable with the existing Floras (Hô 2000; Gagnepain 1942; Li 1979) and the last monographic study of the genus (Engler 1912). When in the years 2004 and 2007 the second author studied aroids from Vietnam in the Paris Herbarium (P), he found four collections of this new species made by E. Poilane already in 1939 and he provisionally annotated them as “Homalomena ovatifolia” on the sheets. Poilane’s specimens were collected in the Thua Thien-Hue, Quang Nam and Khanh Hoa provinces of Vietnam. These specimens, however, are not mentioned by Gagnepain (1942). The species with the character combination of broadly ovate leaf blades with a truncate base, a rather thick and non-constricted spathe and the staminode of each female flower being slender and more or less subcylindric is different from all species known from Vietnam and from the neighbouring countries China, Laos, Cambodia or Thailand. Therefore it is described as new to science in the present contribution.

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith