Calycophysum Triana
Calycophysum Triana, Nuev. Jen. Esp. 20. 1854 [1855, as „Calycophisum„].
Type: Calycophysum pedunculatum Triana, Triana s.n. (K, GDC, isosyntypes), Colombia, Nouvelle-Grenade. Prov. de Bogota, Tenasuca.
Edmondia Cogn. in DC., Monogr. Phan. 3: 420. 1881 (non Cassini 1818), nom. illegit.
Bisedmondia J. Hutchinson, Gen. Fl. Pl. 2: 398. 1967.
Climber with up to ten meters long, herbaceous or woody shoots and thin root, with monoecious sex system. The leaves are simple, petiolate, with ovate-cordate, entire or palmately 3-5-7-lobed blade. The tendrils are 3-6-fid, with apical, adhesive pads. The flowers are large, solitary in the axils, pollinated by bats. The peduncle of the male flowers reaches up to 30 cm in length, up to 15 cm in female flowers. The receptacle-tube is campanulate to urceolate and inflated. The five sepals are large, ovate-lanceolate, the corolla is rotate to tubular-campanulate with five white or yellowish-green petals. The three stamens are inserted in the upper half of the tube on free filaments. The anthers are more or less free, two bithecous, one monothecous with duplicate thecae. The pollen is triporate, echinate, large (polar axis 90-168 µm, equatorial axis 91-169 µm, (Khunwasi 1998)). The ovary is ellipsoid with three placentae and numerous horizontal ovules horizontal. The style is fleshy with three stigmata. The edible fruit is a smooth, elliptic pepo, green with darker green stripes, ripening yellow to orange, containing many compressed, irregularly elliptical seeds with arilloid. The testa is dark brown, irregularly structured.
Four species in Andean cloud forests and lowland rainforest from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, to Peru and Bolivia.
Phylogenetically, Calycophysum is sister to the Central American Sicana and both group with Penelopeia from the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean (Kocyan et al. 2007; Schaefer and Renner 2011).
Accepted species
Calycophysum gracile Cogn., Bull. Acad. Roy. Sci. Belgique, ser. II, 49: 191. 1880.
Calycophysum pedunculatum Triana, Nuev. Jen. Esp. 21. 1854 [1855].
Calycophysum spectabile (Cogn.) C. Jeffrey & Trujillo, Kew Bull. 22: 193. 1971.
Calycophysum weberbaueri Harms, Notizbl. Bot. Gart. Berlin-Dahlem 11: 773. 1933.
Literature
Jeffrey, C. 1971. Calycophysum. Kew Bull. 25: 192-194.
Khunwasi, C. 1998. Palynology of the Cucurbitaceae. Doctoral Dissertation Naturwiss. Fak., University of Innsbruck.
Kocyan, A., Zhang, L.-B., Schaefer, H. and S.S. Renner. 2007. A multi-locus chloroplast phylogeny for the Cucurbitaceae and its implications for character evolution and classification. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 44: 553-577.
Pittier, H. 1922. The species of Calycophysum. Contrib. US. Natl. Herb. 20: 487-490.
Schaefer, H. and S.S. Renner. 2011. Phylogenetic relationships in the order Cucurbitales and a new classification of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae). Taxon 60: 122-138.