Lycianthes multiflora [Bitter ]

Lycianthes multiflora

Citation author:

Bitter

Citation:

Abh. Naturwiss. Vereine Bremen 24 [preprint]: 361. 1919.

Type:

Costa Rica. Cartago: Las Vueltas, Tucurrique, 635 m, Jan 1899, Tonduz 13173 (lectotype designated by Dean and Reyes (2018, pg. 43): M [M-0165975]; isolectotypes: B [F photo negative # 2584], BM [BM000775268], ENCB [ENCB003797], G [G00343135], GH [00934882], K [K000585740], LD [1688216], US [cited by Bitter (1919), not seen], W [acc. # 1903-12658].

Last edited by:

Jennifer Poore

Written by:

Ellen Dean

Habit:

Scandent shrub, treelet, or vine, sometimes reported as epiphytic, 1.5–8 (20) m tall. Young stems light green (drying tan to brown), slightly compressed when dried, becoming brown and woody with age, sparsely to densely pubescent with white, grey, pale yellow, or yellow-orange, uniseriate, multicellular, sessile to short-stalked, multangulate-stellate, eglandular, spreading trichomes 0.1–0.5 (1) mm long, 0.25–0.75 mm in diameter, the rays 4–6 per whorl, usually crisped, not rebranched.

Sympodial structure:

Upper sympodial branching points a mixture of dichasial and monochasial branching (often monochasial). Upper sympodial units 3–9 cm long, 2–5 mm in diameter, difoliate but usually appearing unifoliate due to the small geminate leaf abscissing early or not developing.

Leaves:

Leaves simple, rarely paired and unequal in size, the larger ones with blades 3–16 x 1.5–9 cm, the smaller ones with blades 3–5.5 x 1.5–3.5 cm, the larger and smaller leaves of similar shape, ovate to elliptic, chartaceous to subcoriaceous, sparsely to densely pubescent with trichomes similar to the stems, especially along the veins of the abaxial side of the blade, the trichomes often sessile with the crisped rays appressed to the plant surface, especially on the adaxial side of the blade; major veins 4–7 on either side of the midvein; base often rounded, sometimes cuneate, sometimes oblique; margin entire, usually irregularly undulate; apex acute to acuminate; petioles 0.3–2 cm long.

Inflorescences:

Flowers solitary or in groups of 2–14 (–20), axillary on the two or three distal-most sympodial stem units, the axes sparsely to densely pubescent with trichomes like those of the stem; peduncles usually absent, but area of pedicel attachment sometimes raised into a pad with many attachment scars, or sometimes a peduncle to 3 mm long present; pedicels 5–15 mm long and erect in flower, 8–20 mm long and erect in fruit. The leaves around the maturing fruits often missing, so that the fruits appear like they are part of a terminal panicle.

Flowers:

Flowers 5-merous, all perfect, oriented horizontally. Calyx 1.5–3 mm long, 3–5 mm in diameter, campanulate, sparsely to densely pubescent with trichomes like that of the stem, the margin truncate, usually with 10 erect linear appendages (0.5) 1–4 (6) mm long, emerging 0.25–0.5 mm below calyx rim; fruiting calyx enlarged, bowl-shaped to rotate, 3–4 mm long, 6–10 mm in diameter, the appendages to 5 mm long. Corolla 0.8–1.7 cm long, rotate in orientation, entire in outline, with abundant interpetalar tissue, the adaxial side white to pale violet, glabrous, the abaxial side of the lobes light green, sparsely to densely pubescent with simple to stellate, appressed trichomes. Stamens unequal, the four shorter filaments 0.5–1 mm long, the one long filament 1.5–2 mm long, glabrous; anthers 3–4 mm long, elliptic to lanceolate, free of one another, yellow, sometimes sparsely pubescent on the inner surface, poricidal at the tips, pores ovate, dehiscing distally, not opening into longitudinal slits. Ovary glabrous; style 7–9 mm, linear, straight to curved, glabrous; stigma oblong, sometimes slightly bilobed, decurrent down two sides.

Fruits:

Fruit a berry, 7–17 mm long, 7–20 mm in diameter, globose, orange to red when mature, glabrous, lacking sclerotic granules.

Seeds:

Seeds 30–100 per fruit, 2–4 x 1.5–3 mm, flattened, round to depressed ovate, sometimes shallowly indented on one side, yellow-orange to orange-brown, margin lighter in color than the center, surface with minute serpentine pattern.

Chromosome number:

Not known.

Distribution:

Lycianthes multiflora occurs in Belize, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama, broadly distributed in many wet forest habitats, including lowland tropical wet forest, lower montane rainforest, and evergreen cloud forest, in both primary forest and disturbed areas in secondary forest and along roadsides, 0–1800 m in elevation.

Phenology:

This species has been collected in flower and with mature fruit all months of the year. The corollas on specimens of this species are usually closed, indicating that the corollas are open for only a short time during the day, most likely in morning.

Commentary:

Lycianthes multiflora is one of the most commonly collected species in Central America and is present in a variety of wet forest habitats over a relatively broad elevational range. Its life form can range from epiphyte to shrub to vine. It exhibits a wide variation in trichome density between populations (especially on the calyx and corolla). Its combination of mostly multangulate-stellate, whitish to pale yellow-orange trichomes with crisped rays that often lay appressed to the leaf surface of the adaxial side of the leaf blade, white to lilac mostly entire corollas with abundant interpetiolar tissue, and unequal stamens separate it from many of the other species that grow in Central America.

In fruit, L. multiflora could be confused with Lycianthes sideroxyloides (Schltdl.) Bitter, a species with stellate corollas and equal stamens, with which it overlaps north of Costa Rica. The two species differ in calyx appendage shape (widely obovate in L. sideroxyloides vs linear or with slight swelling at tip in L. multiflora) and trichome morphology (often geminate-stellate trichomes in L. sideroxyloides vs multangulate-stellate in L. multiflora) (see Roe, 1971 for trichome terminology definitions). Lycianthes multiflora is also somewhat similar to L. pauciflora (Vahl) Bitter, which differs in usually having a glabrous corolla (versus often pubescent in L. multiflora) and having a very smooth calyx with appendages that are wider at the tip than at the base; in addition, in L. pauciflora, the calyx in fruit is larger with wider appendages.

In his treatment of the Lycianthes of Panama, D’Arcy (1973 [1974]) created confusion by not including L. multiflora and instead describing new species, two of which, L. luteynii D’Arcy and L. hawksiana D’Arcy, we are synonymizing here with L. multiflora. In addition, L. multiflora is very close morphologically to the two Panamanian species L. howardiana D’Arcy and L. porteriana D’Arcy which differ in having longer calyx appendages. In D’Arcy’s key to Lycianthes, a typical, sparsely pubescent L. multiflora specimen would key to L. tysoniana D’Arcy, a species more allied to L. pauciflora (Vahl) Bitter.

This species was originally described from Costa Rica (Bitter 1919), and most of the names placed in synonymy here are based on specimens from Costa Rica or Panama. An exception to this is the name L. brevipes, which Bitter (1919) based on a collection made by the Austrian botanist Emanuel von Friedrichsthal (Friedrichsthal s.n.). Although the preprinted label with the specimen says Guatemala, Hemsley (1887) wrote that all of the Friedrichsthal collections that Hemsley encountered at the Kew Herbarium were actually collected in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. In fact Bitter (1919), in his protologue for the species, wrote the location as “Guatemala? Nicaragua? No special location”; therefore, it is probable that the type material of L. brevipes was not collected in Guatemala.

References:

Bitter G. 1919. Die Gattung Lycianthes. Abhandlungen herausgegeban vom Naturwissenschaftlichen Verein zu Bremen 24 [preprint]: 292–520.

Bohs L. 2015. Solanaceae. In B. E. Hammel, M. H. Grayum, C. Herrera y N. Zamora (eds.). Manual de plantas de Costa Rica vol. VIII. Monographs in Systematic Botany 131: 205-336.

D’Arcy, W. G. 1973 [1974]. Flora of Panama. Part IX. Family 170. Solanaceae. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 60: 573–780.

Dean, E. and M. Reyes. 2018. Lectotypification of names in the genus Lycianthes (Solanaceae). Phytotaxa 349: 39-46.

Hemsley, W. B. 1887. A sketch of the history of the botanical exploration of Mexico and Central America. In F. Ducane Godman and O. Salvin (eds.) Biologia Centrali-Americana or Contributions to the Knowledge of the Fauna and Flora of Mexico and Central America Vol. 4. Pp. 118–137. R. H. Porter, London, England.

Roe, K. 1971. Terminology of trichomes in the genus Solanum. Taxon 20: 501–508.

Common names and uses:

Costa Rica: “Tomatillo” (Bohs, 2015)

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Lycianthes multiflora Bitter

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