Wilbrandia Silva Manso
Wilbrandia Silva Manso, Enum. Subst. Brazil. 30. 1836.
Type: Wilbrandia hibiscoides Silva Manso, A. Glazious 21465 (P, neotype), Brazil, Goiás, Fazenda do Paraiso.

Perennial climber or trailer with woody rootstock and monoecious or dioecious sex system. The leaves are simple, petiolate, the blade entire to palmately 3-7-lobed. The tendrils are simple. The flowers are small and white. Male flowers are produced in racemes or spikes, the female flowers stand solitary or in dense axillary clusters. The five petals are oblong to lanceolate, papillose. The three stamens are inserted in the upper third of the tube on very short, free filaments. Two anthers are bithecous, one monothecous, coherent into a central head. The straight thecae contain tricolporate, reticulate, medium-sized pollen (polar axis c. 52-53 µm, equatorial axis c. 54-56 µm, (Khunwasi 1998)). The ovary is ovoid-oblong, rostrate with two or three placentae and many, horizontal ovules. The style is 2-3 mm long with two entire or bifid stigmata. The fruit is an ovoid-conical berry, c. 2 cm long and 1.5 cm across, sessile in the leaf axils, rostrate. The many seeds are ovate to oblong, compressed, c. 5 mm long with distinct margin.

The five species grow in rain forest and secondary scrub in South America (Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina).

Phylogenetically, the genus is close to the genera Gurania, Helmontia, and Psiguria, all in tribe Coniandreae but its exact position is still not clear (Schaefer et al. 2009, Schaefer & Renner 2011).

Literature

Khunwasi, C. 1998. Palynology of the Cucurbitaceae. Doctoral Dissertation Naturwiss. Fak., University of Innsbruck.

Martínez Crovetto, R. 1946. Nota taxonómica sobre Wilbrandia sagittifolia Griseb. (Cucurbitaceae). Bol. Soc. Argent. Bot. 1: 312-317.

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.

Schaefer, H., Heibl, C., and S.S. Renner. 2009. Gourds afloat: a dated phylogeny reveals an Asian origin of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) and numerous oversea dispersal events. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276: 843-851.

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