Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
| from the January 29, 2012 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá
Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO THE DICHPETALUM TREE After over two years of being here, not over a hundred yards (meters) from the hut, a tree species has turned up that's new to me. Not only have I never seen the species before, but I've never seen anything in its family. For me it's an exciting discovery. It's about 12 feet tall (3.7m) and is fruiting. You can see the tree's three-parted, drupe-type fruits and broad leaves that are much lighter below than above at the top of this page. A fruit displaying its thin, dry and fairly hard husk is shown below:
The brittle, dry drupe is divided into three hollow compartments, or carpels. In each carpel two dry seeds hang suspended in otherwise empty chambers as shown below:
Seeing the three lobed fruit I was fairly sure the tree belonged to the Spurge or Poinsettia Family, the Euphorbiaceae. However, nothing was found in that family like our tree, plus I've never seen a euphorb with seeds hanging in empty chambers like this, so I began looking in closely related families. The first close family I looked at was the Dichapetalum Family, the Dichapetalaceae. In this part of the world there's a species in that family, DICHAPETALUM DONNELL-SMITHII, and when I looked for pictures of that species they matched our tree. I can find no English name for the plant. The Dichapetalam Family comprises three genera and about 240 species, all tropical or subtropical, and they're found worldwide. Our species must be rare and fairly unknown, for it's not mentioned on most lists and information on it is very sparse. What a buzz to find something so rare and interesting -- and so close to my own front door! |
