A Note on the (Presumed) Female Plant of Sphyranthera lutescens (Euphorbiaceae) in the Nicobar Islands

Abstract

Sphyranthera lutescens (Kurz) Pax & Hoffm. is the sole known species of a monotypic genus established by J. D. Hooker in 1887 for a plant collected by S. Kurz on Middle Andaman Island 'in bamboo jungles along the Middle Straits'. Only the male plant was known; the female has remained unknown until the present day. Kurz referred his plant to the genus Codiaeum, but, as J. D. Hooker remarked when establishing for it the new genus Sphyranthera Hook.f. (S. capitellata Hook.f.), 'the affinities of this genus are uncertain; it is clearly not a Codiaeum, and is probably referable to the tribe Acalypheae' (tribe Crotoneae, subtribe Acalypheae, Hook.f., F.B.I. 5: 243). Codiaeum was included by Hooker in tribe Crotoneae, subtribe Chrozophoreae. These tentative expressions of opinion on taxonomic affinity were of course put forward on the basis of the male plant alone. Pax & Hoffmann, when dealing with Sphyranthera for the second edition of Engler's Pflanzenfamilien (1931) remarked: 'If belonging to the Euphorbiaceae probably to be inserted in the neighbourhood of Blachia' but I think this suggestion is negatived at least by the terminal inflorescence and thin leaves of Blachia. The genus was listed (with a description) at the end of the volume (19c: 231) among a number of other 'unsichere oder unvollkommen beschriebene Gattungen'; and so far as I am aware no other botanist has attempted to suggest the proper place for Sphyranthera within the Euphorbiaceae. In 1980 a collection was made from a fruiting tree in coastal forest at Laful on Great Nicobar Island (D. K. Hore 7579), not accompanied by corresponding male specimens, which I believe may represent the long-missing female plant of Sphyranthera lutescens. The duplicate at K consists of two leafy/fruiting scraps, bearing altogether five leaves, eight slender cauliflorous fruiting peduncles/pedicels, and a number of broken fragments (valves, seeds) of dehisced capsules in an attached envelope. The peduncles (0-5-1-5 cm) were evidently borne in sparse fascicles, were minutely fulvous-pilosulous or almost glabrous, and in turn bore a terminal few-flowered umbel of long-pedicelled flowers. The peduncles and pedicels of this collection (Hore 7579) are slender, firm and eventually almost wiry when dry, and persistent when the fruit has fallen. The capsules (apparently 3-locular) are externally smooth and glabrous, pale greyish in colour. The seeds appear to have been solitary in each loculus. Those that have survived are globose, with an obtuse inner angle, very smooth, of an ochraceous colour, about 4 mm diam., without aril, caruncle or other appendage. The 3 styles are short, deflexed, with numerous fine,