AMORPHOPHALLUS PERRIERI
PROTOLOGUE: Amorphophallus perrieri Hett. & Wahlert, published in Bot. Stud. (Taipei) 55: 2 (2014).
Amorphophallus perrieri Hett. & Wahlert, sp. nov. Type: MADAGASCAR, Prov. Antsiranana: Nosy Ankarea, northwest of Nosy Mitsio, on top of island, 12°50'30"S 48°34'44"E, 220 m, 23 Nov. 2007, fl., G. Wahlert 142 (holotype P).
SYNONYMS:
OTHER NAMES: iriri (Sakalava)
DISTRIBUTION: Madagascar: Madagascar.
DISTRIBUTION NOTE: Madagascar: Antsiranana Province - the islands of Nosy Ankarea and Nosy Mitsio, and the Kalabenono massif on the mainland.².
SPECIES DESCRIPTION:
Seasonally dormant herb. Tuber depressed globose, 8-25 cm in diam. Leaves solitary, to 1 m tall, 1-1.2 m across; petiole 50-84 cm long, 2-7.5 cm in diameter at the base, 1-4 cm in diameter at the apex, smooth, spotted, white-pinkish or dirty pale greyish to ivory white background with oval to elliptic dark olive green spots with or without darker borders, the spots often confluent; lamina decompound, rachises narrowly winged in the distal parts; leaflets elliptic-lanceolate to lanceolate, 2-14.5 cm long, 0.9-4 cm wide, long acuminate, upper surface mid green with or without a very narrow pinkish border, lower surface pale green.²
INFLORESCENCE:
Peduncle 50-105 cm long, 1.5-4 cm in diam. at the base, smooth, pale whitish greenish with numerous olive brown to olive green, elliptic to oval, partly confluent spots. Spathe triangular, 29-33 cm long, 14-16 cm in diam.; base tubular, strongly convolute, inside with few or numerous large warts arranged in longitudinal rows, surface white with a greenish flush, the most basal part flushed with pale purple, upwards with an increasing number of orbicular pale to dark maroon spots, outside whitish green with numerous orbicular or elliptical, partly or almost entirely confluent brownish spots, often with a paler centre; limb erect or oblique, often rolling up over the dorsal surface, margin undulate-plicate, top broadly acute, inside pale or darker purple with numerous orbicular dark brownish-purple spots, denser near the margin, veins sometimes conspicuously dark brown, outside as inside but slightly paler. Spadix as long as the spathe or shorter or slightly longer, 22-23 cm long; female zone cylindric, 2.5-3 cm long, 1.8-2.5 cm in diam., flowers slightly distant; male zone more or less cylindric, 2-3 cm long, 1.9-2.3 cm in diam., flowers congested; appendix 16-17.5 cm long, 3.4-3.8 cm in diam., lower half almost smooth or shallowly to more strongly corrugated or furrowed, upper half shallowly to strongly corrugated and folded and often inflated, top obtuse or irregularly truncated and furrowed, off white, yellowish white or pale green. Ovary globose or slightly ovoid, 2-2.5 mm long, 2 mm in diam., unilocular, white with a green flush or bright green, with or without a blackish purple upper part; style short and thick, conical or cylindrical, 1-1.2 mm long, 1 mm in diam., dark purple; stigma depressed or slightly conical or with one distinct conical, obtuse or acute lobe, 1-1.3 mm in diam., 0.5-1 mm high, surface densely verruculate, off-white or dark greyish purple. Male flowers consisting of 4-5 stamens; stamens 2.5 mm long; filaments 0.5 mm long, partly confluent; anthers 2 mm long, 1.5-2 mm in diam., truncate, off-white, connective often greyish, pores apical. Infructescence elongate; berries ovate, changing from green to yellow to orange.²
ECOLOGY:
Found in the understorey of low, semi-deciduous forest on the top of the island, in rocky, well drained soils over basalt, within the sub-humid forests of the Sambirano bioclimatic region; altitude: 220 m²
ETYMOLOGY:
Named after Joseph Marie Henry Alfred Perrier de la Bâthie (1873-1958), the botanical explorer of Madagascar. He had in fact collected the species himself on Nosy Mitsio in 1932, and the specimen sat in the Paris herbarium for seventy-five years before anyone described the plant.²
NOTES:
1. Diagnosis: it is easily told from its closest Madagascan relatives - Amorphophallus hildebrandtii, Amorphophallus erythrorrhachis and Amorphophallus taurostigma, all from the north of the island - by the obtuse and heavily wrinkled, corrugated upper part of the appendix.²
2. The inflorescence has a pungent odour that has been likened to cheese, carrion and faeces, and flies were seen visiting it in the field.²
3. The species was found independently by several people, on Nosy Mitsio and Nosy Ankarea and at Kalabenono, before it was recognised that Perrier de la Bâthie's 1932 gathering was the same plant. An earlier worker had annotated that sheet as a subspecies of Amorphophallus hildebrandtii but never published the name.²
4. The population on Nosy Ankarea is likely to be safe for a long time to come. The Sakalava people of neighbouring Nosy Mitsio hold the island to be fady - taboo - because it is the ancestral burial ground of their rulers, and so it is neither visited nor settled.²
5. Its description brought the number of Amorphophallus species endemic to Madagascar to eight; a ninth, Amorphophallus paeoniifolius, occurs there as an introduction.²
REFERENCES:
1. Plants of the World Online, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew — Amorphophallus perrieri Hett. & Wahlert
2. Bot. Stud. (Taipei) 55: 2 (2014) — protologue.
3. Alan Galloway — Amorphophallus perrieri, alangallowaybotanicals.com.