Date: Wed, 03 Mar 1999 21:18:23 PST From: "Fernando Rivadavia Lopes" <fe_rivadavia@hotmail.com> To: cp@opus.hpl.hp.com Message-Id: <aabcdefg660$foo@default> Subject: Seeds, Lowrie, & S.American Drosera taxonomy (a bit heavy!)
To David, Jan, and all,
>I read your wish list praying that I had something that you wanted.
Didn't
>happen.
Sorry Dave!!!
>This leads to the following request. Please consider donating
>collected seed to some of the cp seed banks so that we can cultivate
some of
>these exotic (to me) cp's.
In the first place, please remember that there were seven other CPers
along with me on this expedition and their names were all printed out by
Andreas and I in our respective accounts on the listserv. All seeds
collected were shared among us, and most took with them live plants as
well to be cultivated. I'm sure some of their seeds must already be
germinating in tissue culture in Europe and the USA and will hopefully
soon be widely available. This was after all one of the main reasons for
this whole expedition: introduce new species into cultivation,
especially through the "democraticness" of tissue culture.
Second, I have a long standing agreement with Allen Lowrie. I send him
all my seeds and he sends me whatever I want that he can get his hands
on. For my master project with molecular phylogeny of Drosera, he was
the single most important donator of material, sending me a wide variety
of specimens of the rarest Australian Drosera. Without him, I don't know
what I would've done.
So my seeds will go to Allen's seed bank, allowing you all to acquire
them soon for a small price. It might not be as cheap as tissue culture
or other seed banks, but Allen is nonetheless helping to introduce and
distribute rare species around the world, making them (hopefully)
eventually widely available, as now seems to be the case with many
Brazilian Drosera, Genlisea and Utricularia species which were unheard
of in cultivation around 10 years ago when I first started studying CPs
in the wild in Brazil, and which Allen was at least partically
responsible for helping to spread through my seed donations.
Although I'm not getting any money out of this and am purely interested
in further research into CPs, don't forget that the money Allen gets
from selling seeds and other CPs helps support all his expeditions to
discover new species around Australia and introduce these into
cultivation as well (maybe I should sell seeds too...). Therefore your
money will be very well spent on Allen, you can be sure, more so than
with any other CP nursery.
>And to the managers of cp seed banks, I'd like to request that if
Fernando
>donates seed that you mark those seeds as coming from him. I have D.
>kaieteurensis in cultivation but am uncertain that the seeds were
labeled
>correctly. I know that would not be the case with seeds coming from
>Fernando.
Thanks Dave, but I wouldn\222t be so sure of that! I\222m still trying to
figure out the identity of some of the stuff I collected on this last
trip. Although many of the species were similar to or the same as some
found in S Brazilian, it is nonetheless a new area for me, a new
frontier. I promise at least to keep the listserv tuned in to any and
all recent developments regarding any and all S.American CPs I come
across (see below!).
Having said this, I better continue where I left off in my taxonomic
discussion of Venezuelan Drosera with Jan, now that my things have
arrived from Japan, including all my Drosera literature.
Jan, I noticed that Duno de Stefano and Culham in their recent key to
Droseraceae (Flora of the Venezuelan Guayana Vol.4, 1998?) synonymized
D.arenicola var.occidentalis to type plants, in agreement with the
opinions I expressed to you when I arrived back from Venezuela:
> First of all, the division of D.arenicola into 2 varieties is
worthless
> if you ask me!
Remember I said I\222d collected a specimen which had 14 flowers near
Kavanayen? Well I just realised that the TYPE location for D.arenicola
is precisely Kavanayen! So the separation of this species into two
varieties based on a supposed difference in flower scape length and
flower number seems to have no solid support at all.
As for the D.felix/kaieteurensis/cayenensis confusion, I think I\222ve
solved it, after quite a bit of taxonomic sleuthing! It\222s a bit
confusing, but here goes:
We found what I at first thought was D.felix, but when I realized that
single flowers on short scapes were just as common as longer scapes with
2, 3 or even more flowers, I thought that maybe this was actually
D.kaieteurensis and that D.felix was just a stupid synonym based on
single-flowered specimens of D.kaieteurensis.
After \223D.felix/kaiteurensis\224, we found what I had seen in
photos and in
cultivation labelled as D.cayennensis, and innocently assumed it was
truly this species \226 should\222ve known better than to trust this
informal ID. These plants were growing in shadier habitat than
D.\224felix/kait.\224, were more eglandular-pubescent, with slightly
longer scapes, and overall pinkish in color. The only problem is that
in the same paper as mentioned above, it says that D.cayennensis occurs
only from 100-500m in altitude, while we were always between 1000 and
1500m in altitude, not to mention that it has glndular-pubescent
inflorescences.
So now I believe we never even saw D.cayennensis at all. The pinkish
plants are actually the true D.kaieteurensis while the D.\224felix/kait.\224
(which I initially thought was D.felix, then believed was D.kait.,
including D.felix as its synonym) is the true D.felix! Got it?? Only
D.felix is not as exclusively single-flowered as previously believed.
This sure seems to make more sense, agrees better with Duno de Stefano &
Culham\222s key (and drawings), and might even explain their recent
attempts to synonymize D.panamensis and D.colombiana under
D.cayennensis. These might be after all at least part of the same
complex, I would just have to see real D.cayennensis to be sure.
UFA! I\222m glad I haven\222t sent out any seeds of these plants yet! And I
gotta rewrite a few articles I was preparing for CPN and others. See
Dave? It\222s all confusing for me as well!!
So if D.kait. and D.felix. are truly what I now believe they are, they
are really very close taxa. The only difference was habitat, color of
the plants, more numerous flowers in the former, and more heavily
eglandular-pubescent scapes in the former too. Now let\222s put the final
pieces of this puzzle together!
Remember my description of the unique seed dispersal mechanism in these
two species?? Remember how I described that the seeds remain inside the
open, undetached carpel walls like in a bird\222s nest, to be probably
dispersed by rain drops? Well now I realise that D.felix and D.kait. are
the only two species in Duno & Culham\222s key which are said to have
\223sepals reflexed when mature\224. Plus, they write that the petals are
\223deciduous\224 in D.kait, and not marcescent like almost all the Drosera I
can think of out of the top of my head, remaining attached above the
fruit, although dried up and shrivelled. They don\222t say it is or isn\222t
so in D.felix, but I noticed they were truly deciduous.
Isn\222t this all INTERESTING????? I know, I know, all you non-taxonomists
out there must be falling asleep. ZZZZZ! I doubt many people made it
this far, but for me this is one of the most rewarding moments, when I
begin fitting in the pieces of the puzzle into something that actually
makes sense. It\222s very thrilling, believe it or not!
Best Wishes,
Fernando Rivadavia
Sao Paulo, Brazil
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