Fruiting sepals lack any hygroscopic change in shape, along with the swollen diasporesThe Andean Paepalanthus pilosus complicated (Eriocaulaceae): a revision with 3 new taxadetach readily in the capitulum. Sepal thickening is finest developed in the Peruvian populations of P. caryonauta, the thickening extending into the pedicels of the pistillate flowers, which persist as conspicuous “stumps” around the otherwise naked receptacle following flower fall. To evaluate to Melcher’s final results with P. pilosus, I tested flotation of two diaspores of P. caryonauta (Barclay 5136, Dudley 11194), which also floated for 3 days, possibly due to the buoyancy on the thickened perianth tissue. Relative to P. pilosus and P. dendroides, nevertheless, wind dispersal within this species may well be inhibited on account of the enhanced weight and glabrate surface with the diaspore. The staminate flowers of P. caryonauta also PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20109258 incidentally thicken with age (Fig. 5J), the corolla building a thick columnar anthophore, possibly as a pleiotropic impact of the pistillate flower thickening. Inside the Peruvian plants the staminate flower pedicels are obsolete. In other species, the anthophore is membranous or fleshy but narrowed toward the base, and staminate flowers are commonly pedicellate.Pathology Smut fungus infection was observed in both P. dendroides (Nu z 7773, Tupayachi 50) and P. pilosus var. pilosus (Sag tegui 12242). In these specimens the compact black spore masses swelling the ovary locules simulate mature fruit.Ecology and distribution Paepalanthus pilosus and allies occur strictly in wet and incredibly wet paramo and subparamo formations from the Andes, usually connected with Sphagnum. Most taxa, except for P. dendroides, happen at about 3100-4000 m on wet but in all probability not inundated web sites. Of these, P. pilosus and P. caryonauta will be the most equivalent in habit, each forming dense mats or cushions 30 cm or far more in diameter and reported as locally abundant. Paepalanthus pilosus is definitely the extra generally collected species, noted for its colonization of disturbed web-sites, and frequently cited in ecological studies of paramo as “P. karstenii.” Further detail is discovered within the species discussions. The principal distributions of P. pilosus and P. lodiculoides, on one particular hand, and P. caryonauta on the other, form an allopatric mosaic with respect to every other (Figs six, eight). In Colombia, P. caryonauta is found mainly inside the central Cordillera, barely entering northern Ecuador at P amo Angel, even though P. pilosus is MedChemExpress AZ876 abundant within the eastern Cordillera and the Cordillera de Merida, Venezuela. Paepalanthus pilosus reappears in southern Ecuador and northern Peru, in the organic barrier of your Gir -Paute valley (cf. J gensen et al. 1995), continuing south by way of the Amotape-Huancabamba zone (sensu Weigend 2002, 2004). Paepalanthus caryonauta, in turn, is found at various localities from Central Peru south to La Paz, Bolivia, around the wet eastern slope. Paepalanthus lodiculoides, even though much less widespread, features a disjunct distributional pattern in South America which parallels that of P. pilosus.Nancy Hensold / PhytoKeys 64: 17 (2016)Parallel disjunctions may possibly be noted in other pulviniform Andean Eriocaulaceae. The Andean species of P. subsect. Dichocladus possess a collective distribution related to that of P. pilosus, occurring in the northern a part of the eastern Cordillera of Colombia (P. muscosus), and within the Amotape-Huancabamba Zone (P. dichotomus var. glabrescens, P. ferreyrae). However, Eriocaulon microcephalum, which occu.
