Solanum boliviense [Dunal ]

Solanum boliviense

Citation author:

Dunal

Citation:

in DC., Prodr. 13(1): 43. 1852.

Type:

Bolivia. Exact locality unknown, but likely in Bolivia [1830-1833] (holotype, P [Morton neg. 3698, BM, NY]; isotype, W [Correll neg. 585 or F neg. 33050, BM, F, MO, NY, UC, W]).

Last edited by:

Spooner, D.M.

Written by:

Spooner, D.M. & A. Clausen

Habit:

Herbs 0.1-0.3 m tall, rosette forming to semierect. Stems 1.5-4 mm in diameter at base of plant, unwinged, finely puberulent to moderately pubescent with coarse whitish simple hairs, green.

Sympodial structure:

Sympodial units tri- to plurifoliate, not geminate.

Leaves:

Leaves odd-pinnate, the blades 5.8-19.8 x 2.4-5.8 cm, medium green, membranous to chartaceous, moderately pubescent adaxially and abaxially, with hairs like those of the stems; lateral leaflet pairs 0-4, decreasing greatly in size toward the leaf base, with the terminal leaflet much larger than the laterals; most distal lateral leaflets (when present) 1-3.8 x 0.3-1.8 cm, ovate to elliptic, the apex acute to obtuse to rounded, the base typically sessile and decurrent on the basiscopic side or attenuate; terminal leaflet 2.7-19 x 0.5-5.8 cm, ovate to elliptic, the apex acute to obtuse, the base attenuate; interjected leaflets 0-3, sessile to short petiolulate, ovate to orbicular; petioles 0.8-3.4 cm, or sometimes without clearly marked petioles on specimens decurrent to the base of the leaf, finely puberulent to moderately pubescent with coarse whitish simple hairs. Pseudostipules absent, minute, or rarely up to 5 mm long, pubescent with hairs like those of the stem.

Inflorescences:

Inflorescences 0.8-5 cm, terminal with a subtending axillary bud, generally in distal half of the plant, usually forked, with 2-10 flowers, with all flowers apparently perfect, the axes pubescent with hairs like those of the stem; peduncle 0.8-4.5 cm long; rachis 1-8 cm long; pedicels 10-30 mm long in flower and fruit, spaced 1-10 mm apart, articulated high in the distal half.

Flowers:

Flowers homostylous, 5-merous. Calyx 4-10 mm long, the tube 1-2 mm, the lobes 3-8 mm, long attenuate, the acumens 1-5 mm long, with hairs like those of the stem. Corolla 2.5-3.8 cm in diameter, pentagonal, violet, the tube 1-2 mm long, the acumens 1-2 mm long, the corolla edges flat, not folded dorsally, glabrous abaxially, minutely puberulent adaxially, especially along the midribs, ciliate at the margins, especially at the of the corollas. Stamens with the filaments 1-2 mm long; anthers 4-6 mm long, lanceolate, connivent, yellow, poricidal at the tips, the pores lengthening to slits with age. Ovary glabrous; style 6-10 mm x ca. 1 mm, exceeding stamens by 2-3 mm, straight, glabrous; stigma clavate to capitate.

Fruits:

Fruit a globose berry, 2-2.5 cm in diameter, medium to deep green when ripe, often with scattered white dots, glabrous.

Seeds:

Seeds from living specimens ovoid and ca. 2 mm long, whitish to greenish in fresh condition and drying brownish, with a thick covering of “hair-like” lateral walls of the testal cells that make the seeds mucilaginous when wet, green-white throughout; testal cells honeycomb shaped when lateral walls removed by enzyme digestion.

Chromosome number:

2n = 2x = 24 voucher: Spooner et al. 6635 (PTIS) (Hijmans, et al. 2007)

Distribution:

Southern Peru (Depts. Apurímac and Cusco) to northwest Argentina, in high dry mountain rocky slopes, among bushes and large tussocks or on bare soil, growing close to and within cattle enclosures, along mountain roads and paths, edge of fields, sometimes as a weed, along streamsides; 1600-4270 m in elevation.

Phenology:

Flowering and fruiting from January to April.

Phylogeny:

Solanum boliviense is a member of Solanum sect. Petota Dumort., the tuber-bearing cultivated and wild potatoes. On a higher taxonomic level, it is a member of the informally-named Potato Clade, a group of perhaps 200-300 species that also includes the tomato and its wild relatives (Bohs, 2005).

Commentary:

Cárdenas and Hawkes (1946) recognized two taxa from different collections of Cárdenas 3505 mounted on different sheets: Solanum toralapanum variety subintegrifolium and S. ellipsifolium.

Hawkes and Hjerting (1985a) attempted to describe Solanum astleyi but failed to designate a holotype. They later corrected this in Hawkes and Hjerting (1985b) when they designated a holotype and referred to their original publication.

Solanum boliviense, S. megistacrolobum, S. sanctae-rosae, and S. toralapanum (the latter variously recognized at the species, subspecies, and varietal ranks) are very similar morphologically and until this taxonomic treatment have been recognized as distinct taxa (Correll, 1962; Hawkes and Hjerting, 1969, 1989; Ochoa, 1984, 1990; Giannattasio and Spooner 1994a, b; Spooner et al., 1997). Regarding S. megistacrolobum and S. toralapanum, Giannattasio and Spooner (1994a) examined their species status with morphological data and Giannattasio and Spooner (1994b) with single- to low-copy nuclear DNA restriction site data. They found the two taxa to be very similar with both data sets, but distinguished only by multivariate analysis of the data (no taxon-specific characters were found). They recognized the two taxa as subspecies of S. megistacrolobum.

Regarding S. astleyi and S. boliviense, Spooner et al. (1997) used Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA (RAPD) data to examine these morphologically very similar species. They found that they could be distinguished with RAPDs, but only by genetic distances supporting subspecies. They recognized S. astleyi as a subspecies of S. boliviense.

Regarding S. sanctae-rosae, we considered this a good species until Amplified Fragment Length (AFLP) DNA data (Jacobs et al., 2008) and our unpublished DNA sequence data showed it to be in a group with S. megistacrolobum and S. toralapanum. The above results forced us to reconsider the species status of all of these taxa with the morphological data from herbarium specimens needed for this comprehensive taxonomic treatment of Solanum. Regarding herbarium specimen data from the literature, we compared the independent identifications of S. boliviense, S. megistacrolobum, and S. toralapanum from taxonomic treatments of sect. Petota from Bolivia by Hawkes and Hjerting (1989) and Ochoa (1990). Of the 69 collection numbers cited in common for these three species (excluding type specimens) 12 of them (17.4%) were provided with different identifications between treatments. This analysis suggests that these taxa are too narrowly defined to be distinguished by practical morphological means.

Regarding our own inspection of herbarium sheets, our attempts to identify herbarium specimens showed so much overlap of putative “species-specific” traits, sometimes within single populations, that we decided to synonymize all of these names. We consider the single-copy nuclear RFLP and AFLP data to highlight microevolutionary divergence that is best regarded as biological races (Mallett, 2008), but not populations that have yet diverged to biological species.

Solanum boliviense is very similar to S. acaule and S. ×aemulans. Solanum boliviense and S. ×aemulans have articulated pedicels but S. acaule lacks articulated pedicels. Solanum boliviense can be differentiated from Solanum ×aemulans by the number of lateral leaflets and by the pentagonal corolla.

References:

Cárdenas, M. & J.G. Hawkes 1946. New or little-known wild potato species from Bolivia and Peru.
J. Linn Soc., Bot 53: 91-108.

Correll, D.S. 1962. The potato and its wild relatives.
Contr. Texas Res. Found., Bot. Stud. 4: 1-606.

Hawkes, J.G. & J.P. Hjerting 1969. The potatoes of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay: a biosystematic study.
Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, UK.

Ochoa, C.M. 1984. Karyotaxonomic studies on wild Bolivian tuber-bearing Solanum sect. Petota (1).
Phytologia 55: 17-40.

Hawkes, J.G. & J.P. Hjerting 1985. New Solanum taxa from Bolivia: a brief note.
Bot. J. Linn. Soc, 91: 445-446.

Hawkes, J.G. & J.P. Hjerting 1985. Two new wild potato species from Bolivia.
Bot. J. Linn. Soc, 90: 105-112.

Hawkes, J.G. & J.P. Hjerting 1989. The potatoes of Bolivia: their breeding value and evolutionary relationships.
Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Ochoa, C.M. 1990. The potatoes of South America: Bolivia.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.

Giannattasio, R. & D.M. Spooner 1994. A reexamination of species boundaries and hypotheses hybridization concerning Solanum megistacrolobum and S. toralapanum (Solanum sect. Petota, series Megistacroloba): molecular data.
Syst. Bot. 19:106-115.

Spooner, D.M., M.L. Ugarte & P.W. Skroch 1997. Species boundaries and interrelationships of two closely related sympatric diploid wild potato species, Solanum astleyi and S. boliviense based on RAPDs.
Theor. Appl. Genet. 95:764-771.

Ochoa, C.M. 1999. Las papas de Sudamerica: Perú.
Centro International de La Papa (CIP), Lima, Perú.

Bohs, L. 2005. Major clades in Solanum based on ndhF sequences.
Pp. 27-49 in R. C. Keating, V. C. Hollowell, & T. B. Croat (eds.), A festschrift for William G. D’Arcy: the legacy of a taxonomist. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden, Vol. 104. Missouri Botanical Garden Press, St. Louis.

Hijmans, R., T. Gavrilenko, S. Stephenson, J. Bamberg, A. Salas & D.M. Spooner 2007. Geographic and environmental range expansion through polyploidy in wild potatoes (Solanum section Petota).
Global Ecol. Biogeogr. 16: 485-495.

Mallett, J. 2008. Hybridization, ecological races and the nature of species: empirical evidence for the ease of speciation.
Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B. 363: 2971-2986.

Jacobs, M.J., R.G. van den Berg, V.G.A.A. Vleeshouwers, M. Visser, R. Mank, M. Sengers, R. Hoekstra & B. Vosman 2008. AFLP analysis reveals lack of phylogenetic structure within Solanum section Petota.
BMC Evol. Biol. 8, 145: 2-12.

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Solanaceae

Solanum boliviense Dunal

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