Daleae Imagines page 741 plate LXXIV
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Title
Daleae Imagines page 741 plate LXXIV
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Creator(s)
R. C. Barneby
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Publisher
The New York Botanical Garden Press
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Description
PLATE LXXIV Dalea obovatifolia Ortega, native to southern Mexico, highland Guatemala, and Honduras, has green foliage, but the stems and leaf-stalks, and often the leaflets also, are thinly pilose with fine, spirally twisted hairs. Persistent, boat-shaped bracts clasp the base of a hyaline calyx which is bell-shaped, divided into glassy panels by filiform livid ribs, and crenately toothed around the silvery-ciliate mouth. The long-clawed banner opens greenish-white but soon turns reddish; the short-clawed inner petals, at full anthesis carried out on a column beyond the calyx, are suffused or tipped with peacock shades of greenish or bronzy violet that fade livid purple. The var. obovatifolia, one of the first daleas cultivated in Spain, where it provided Cavanilles with the type of his genus Parosela, is probably a derived form representing the species in the high arid valleys and tablelands on the north slope of the Neovolcanic Belt lying between the Nevado de Toluca and Mt. Orizaba and disjunctly, perhaps by parallel adaptation, in the mountains of central Oaxaca. Its distinctive characters are a perennial root, diffuse herbaceous stems, a relatively large flower, a calyx externally pubescent below the orifice, and bracts contracted into a tail shorter than the body. The var. uncifera (C. & S.) Barneby is found either at lower elevations or in more sheltered and moister sites than var. obovatifolia. It is common in the pine forests of the Neovolcanic Belt from central Michoacan to Veracruz, and has been collected in scattered stations in Guerrero, Oaxaca, Guatemala, and Honduras. The central stem of var. uncifera rises erect from an annual root but may be either stout or slender, when fully grown one to twelve decimeters tall, and if active growth continues late into the dry winter season it may become softly woody. Diagnostic features, not always correlated, are a small flower subtended by long-tailed bracts and a calyx glabrous externally but fringed around the mouth. Inflorescences × 1; stipules and leaflets × 3; the rest (except where mentioned) × 5. var. obovatifolia: 1) summit of stem; 2) stipules; 3) leaflets; 4) flower + bract; 4a) another, smaller calyx, at twice the scale of 4; 5) bract, ventral view; 6) banner, ventral view; 7) androecium; 8) pod. var. uncifera: 9) summit of stem; 10) stipules; 11) leaflets; 12) flower + bract; 13) a larger flower; 14) banner, ventral view; 15) wing; 16) keel.
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Taxonomy
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Image Type