Tabebuia vellosoi Toledo

Authority

Gentry, Alwyn H. 1992. Bignoniaceae--part II (Tribe Tecomeae). Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 25: 1-370. (Published by NYBG Press)

Family

Bignoniaceae

Scientific Name

Tabebuia vellosoi Toledo

Type

Neotype. Brazil. Rio de Janeiro: Mun. Teresópolis, 100 m, 31 Jan 1978 (fl), Peixoto & Gentry 935 (MO, RB).

Synonyms

Bignonia longiflora Cav., Tecoma alba var. subdenudata Bureau, Tecoma longiflora Griseb.

Description

Species Description - Shrub or tree 2-20 m tall, the bark smooth and pale, the branchlets subtetragonal, stellate-rufes-cent when young, glabrescent, the cortex tending to wrinkle and split when older. Leaves palmately 5-7-foliolate, the leaflets oblong-elliptic to obovate, obtuse to acutish, rounded to truncate at base, the terminal leaflet to 15 cm long and 6 cm wide, lateral leaflets progressively smaller, conspicuously serrate, membranaceous to chartaceous, inconspicuously lepidote above and below, glabrescently stellate pubescent above (usually persistently so on midvein), below rather densely dendroid floccose when young, the surface tannish from the trichomes, partially glabrescent except along main veins; terminal petiolule 1.5-4 cm long, the laterals shorter, the petiole 3-21 cm long, stellate tomentose to partially glabrescent. Inflorescence a contracted more or less fasciculate terminal panicle, the branches reddish villous with a short indument of stellate trichomes and a longer one of slender simple trichomes, the bracts and bracteoles hidden by the indumentum. Flowers with the calyx campanulate, irregularly 2-5-lobed, 14-20 mm long, 10-14 mm wide, reddish villous with long slender simple trichomes 1-2 mm long, also with a shorter stellate indumentum; corolla tubular-infundibuliform, 5-8 cm long, yellow with reddish pencilling in throat, when dried with the venation reticulate to the margins of the lobes, the dried tube and lobes indistinguishable in color, the tube 4-5 cm long, 1.5-2.5 cm wide at mouth of tube, the lobes 1-2 cm long, glabrous outside, inside rather densely pubescent in floor and throat with flat flexuous trichomes, ca. 1 mm long, glabrous at level of stamen insertion, the lobes strongly (Minas Gerais) or not at all ciliate; stamens didynamous, the thecae divergent, 2.5-3 mm long; ovary oblong, 4 mm long, 2 mm wide, glabrous; disk annular pulvinate, 1 mm long, 3 mm wide. Fruit a linear-cylindric capsule, tapering to the base and apex, 10-40 cm long, 1.3-1.5 cm wide, the valves coriaceous, densely pubescent with a rusty short-stellate tomentum and a longer villous one of simple trichomes; seeds 0.5-0.7 cm long, 1-2 cm wide, the rather short wings hyaline-membranaceous.

Discussion

Tabebuia vellosoi has been much confused with T. serratifolia (see Gentry et al., 1984). As originally intended by Toledo and subsequently accepted in Brazil it is synonymous with T. serratifolia. Nevertheless the name was proposed as a nomen novum for Bignonia longiflora Vellozo and must thus be based on interpretation of Vellozo’s plate in the absence of any actual Vellozo collections. This plate represents quite a different species from T. serratifolia. De Candolle (1845) was the first author to suggest that Bignonia longiflora Vellozo might be conspecific with Tabebuia serratifolia. He placed it tentatively, with a query, under what he called Tecoma speciosa, i.e., the same widespread species now universally known as Tabebuia serratifolia. In the Flora Brasiliensis Bureau and K. Schumann (1897) maintained Vellozo’s species as distinct, treating it as Tecoma longiflora (Veil.) Bur. & K. Schum., but also included in it material of T. serratifolia; in the Flora Brasiliensis most material of Tabebuia serratifolia was treated under its synonym Tecoma araliacea, putatively differentiated by shorter corollas and by flowering with the leaves, rather than precociously, as in Tecoma longiflora. The poorly chosen key character of precocious flowering led to much confusion, since mass-flowering Tabebuia species can flower either with or without leaves, depending on environmental stimuli and varying in the same tree from year to year and even from branch to branch. Even worse, corolla size is notoriously variable in large-flowered Bignoniaceae. Subsequent to the faulty Flora Brasiliensis treatment, many large-flowered or precociously flowering collections of T. serratifolia from coastal Brazil were identified as Tabebuia (or Tecoma) longiflora. However, Vellozo’s original B. longiflora is a later homonym of Bignonia longiflora Cav. (1799), the basionym for the Ecuadorian plant now known as Macranthisiphon longiflorus (Cav.) K. Schum. Moreover, the epithet “longiflora” cannot be used in either Tecoma or Tabebuia for the Brazilian species since it is predated by use of the same epithet for an Antillean species (Tecoma longiflora Griseb. (1866) = Tabebuia longiflora (Griseb.) Greenm. (1897) = Ekmanianthe longiflora). When Toledo proposed the nomen novum T. vellosoi, he followed then current usage in accepting the large-flowered and small-flowered plants of T. serratifolia as specifically distinct. Subsequently T. serratifolia (as T. vellosoi) was selected as the symbol of the Brazilian Botanical Society and the prime candidate for Brazilian national tree. While T. vellosoi has no claim to recognition as Brazil’s national flower or tree, it does turn out to be the valid name for a species of Tabebuia. The identification of Vellozo’s plate has remained unclear. The salient features include consistently 7-foliolate leaves with sharply and closely serrate leaflets having many secondary veins. These are exactly the features that characterize the collections cited above which thus represent the rediscovery a century later of the plant illustrated by Vellozo. This species is most closely related to T. catarinensis, but that species differs consistently in the smaller less membranaceous much more glabrescent leaflets, a shrub habit, and lacking the long simple trichomes of the calyx and fruit.

Common Names

ipe preto

Distribution

Coastal Brazil from Paraná to Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, mostly in montane forest above 1000 m.

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