The Plant Press

Art by Alice Tangerini: Cyrtandra uapouensis W. L. Wagner & Lorence

From Plant Press, Vol. 17, No. 3, July 2014.

At the 2014 Smithsonian Botanical Symposium, Jonathan Price (University of Hawaii at Hilo) spoke about the evolutionary biogeography of Pacific archipelagos. Two conclusions in his talk were that lineages that speciate greatly in one archipelago do so in others and species radiations are much larger in larger archipelagoes. The Cyrtandra (Gesneriaceae) lineage exemplifies these two conclusions (Am. J. Bot. 98: 449-459; 2011). Shown here is Cyrtandra uapouensis, a critically endangered species endemic to the high ridges of Ua Pou in the Marquesas Islands (PhytoKeys 30: 33-64; 2013).

Aster or Dysaster: Trying to Infer Phylogeny

From Plant Press, Vol. 17, No. 3, July 2014.

By V.A. Funk

US 3628267 is a holotype of Dysaster cajamarcensis H. Rob. & V.A. Funk, collected from Contumazá, Peru in 1992 by T.F. Stuessy, D.J. Crawford and A. Sagastequi.

In April 2014, Harold Robinson and Vicki Funk published an article in Phytokeys (36: 35-40) describing a new genus, Dysaster, and a new species, D. cajamarcensis H. Rob. & V.A. Funk. Robinson had suggested naming it Dysaster because it was so difficult to place. In fact, the article starts off by saying:

“There is something very unsatisfying about a plant, sent for identification, that has no strikingly distinctive feature, but has a combination of characteristics that excludes it from any already known genus. It is particularly unsatisfying when the plant involved is a member of a tribe such as the Astereae in which phyletic studies using DNA… are not yet adequately correlated with morphological and anatomical studies. Nevertheless, such a plant has been collected in northern Peru.”

While the authors enjoyed the small joke concerning the name they had no idea that it had deeper meaning. Shortly after it was published, their colleague Jan-Frits Veldkamp (Nationaal Herbarium Nederland) wrote to Funk with some interesting information which is paraphrased below:

Just saw your paper on Dysaster. Fortunately, it is not a later homonym of Disaster Gilli, Ann. Naturhist. Mus. Wien 83: 454 (1979 publ. 1980) from New Guinea (Rhamnaceae) because the orthography, derivation, and distribution are unlikely to be confused (except perhaps in universal databases!). Gilli was a schoolteacher in Vienna and after his retirement went to visit his former students in faraway countries where he made collections. Apparently what he could not identify with the means available in W (Herbarium of the Natural History Museum in Vienna) he described as new. One place he visited was Papua New Guinea where he collected on Mt. Wilhelm, the best known and explored area of the island. Here he, among a number of other novelties, "discovered" a new genus of Rhamnaceae with flowers that resembled two overlapping stars. Hence the name "Disaster". Professor C.G.G.J. van Steenis became very upset with all the new taxa and asked for a loan of the type material. Thus it became clear that Disaster was not a Rhamnaceae, but a Sterculiaceae! Hence Gilli is locally known as Disaster Gilli.

Botanical trivial pursuit at its best!

Stalking the Wild Hesperomannia

From Plant Press, Vol. 17, No. 3, July 2014.

By Jason Cantley (as told to Vicki Funk)

May 23, 2014, was as typical a Hawaiian morning as any other. The sun was brightly shining and there were a few rain clouds resting against the mountains. The locals were already starting their daily commute to the big city of Honolulu to finish out the workweek. But this day was not an ordinary day for five botanists on the island O‘ahu. This morning the botanists were going on a hike to find one of the rarest plants in the world.

Jason Cantley, a newly minted Ph.D. from the Botany Department at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, organized this special trip many weeks in advance. The plant they were searching for, Hesperomannia oahuensis (Hillebr.) O.Deg. (Compositae: Vernonieae), was at the top of his ‘botany bucket list’ of plants to see flowering in the wild. In fact, H. oahuensis is so exceedingly rare that only two plants (of less than a handful total) developed flowers this year in the wild and unfortunately, one of these wasn’t able to fully flower because an invasive rat badly damaged its stem before its flowers were able to fully develop. This meant that there was only one solitary flowering individual of H. oahuensis in the wild this year and Jason was determined to see it.