Zomicarpella N.E.Br.

When I visited the Kew Herbarium (K) in January and February 2007, I saw a specimen that was filed as Filarum manserichense Nicolson. It was clear that this plant did not belong to Filarnm Nicolson because of the absence of the much elongated, thread-like connectives of the male flowers. My first impression was that it represented a new species of the genus Zomicarpella N. E. Br. I requested a loan of the three specimens from the United States National Herbarium (US) in Washington, D.C., which arrived soon at the Botanische Staatssammlung Munchen (M). When I studied these specimens, it turned out that they represent Zomicarpella maculata N. E. Br., which was only collected once, 116 yr ago, and described by N. E. Brown in 1881. It was collected in Colombia, at that time called New Granada, and introduced by J. Linden into Belgium, where it was cultivated in his famous nursery. He sent one leaf and one inflorescence to N. E. Brown for determination. Probably there was only one plant in cultivation, because when N. E. Brown asked for more material, this species had already disappeared from cultivation. Therefore only this meagre herbarium material exists in the Kew Herbarium. N. E. Brown made also drawings of the inflorescence and analyses of the flowers, but these were never published by him. When I studied the three borrowed specimens closer, they showed a greater variation in the flower structures, for instance in the length of the appendix or the length of the male and female flower zones on the spadix axis; otherwise the leaves are of the same shape and venation type. Since the holotype of Zomicarpella maculata is well known to me, I concluded that these new collections and the holotype lie within the variation of a natural species. It must be mentioned that the new collections all came from Peru, far away from the collection of the type which was given only as New Granada without any exact locality. Therefore, Zomicarpella maculata must be a widespread species, but probably quite rare or it was always overlooked because it is a very tiny plant growing on the forest floor. I would be not surprised if somewhere in a herbarium more material exists, but was not recognized as that species. A similar situation happened with Gearum brasiliense N. E. Br. from Brazil, which was never found for about 150 yr until a Brazilian collector recollected it for the second time - and then the collection was filed erroneously under the genus Xanthosoma Schott. In 1989 I found a second species of this genus in Brazil, Edo. Amazonas, near Atalaia do Norte at the Rio Javari, and described this species as Zomicarpella amazonica Bogner (Bogner, 1997). It had already been collected near Benjamin Constant, not far from Atalaia do Norte, by two botanists in the year 1945 (I have seen only photographs of this specimen). Living plants of my collection (Bogner, 1985) are still in cultivation; they are growing well, and are also flowering regularly.