Mauritia

Buriti Palm ( Mauritia flexuosa ), habitus.

Mauritia is a native to tropical South America Palm genus. The Buriti Palm ( Mauritia flexuosa ) is a regionally important crop of this genus.

• 4.1 Notes and references

Features

The representatives are massive, single -stemmed, dioecious tree-shaped palm trees. The stem is erect, face down in the upper part of the dried leaf sheaths, lower down freely. The bark is hard, the Mark soft.

The chromosome number is 2n = 30,

The leaves are fan-shaped, large, reduplikat and costapalmat short. The leaf sheath is initially Roehrig and tears over the petiole on. At the edges sometimes sit coarse fibers. The petiole is striking at the top ( adaxial ) he is grooved at the base, otherwise in cross-section circular. He is smooth and unarmed. The leaf blade is divided circular and along the abaxial folds almost to the approach in numerous, simple folded segments. The midribs are clear.

Inflorescences

It is formed only one per inflorescence. He stands between the leaves. Male and female inflorescences are superficially similar. The cover sheet is short, Roehrig, zweikielig and has two short triangular lobes. The peduncle is shorter than the inflorescence axis. It is elliptical in cross-section and bears numerous, overlapping, distich standing -tube bracts. The bracts of the inflorescence axis are numerous cases when the vagina side axes, are distich, each bearing a hanging projecting to the lateral axis of the first order. On the lateral axes of the first order is a short, zweikieliges, röhriges cover page and one to a few empty distiche bracts, followed by tubed, short bracts which bear each a short to medium length, straight or curved Rachilla. The male catkins Rachilla is

Flowers

The male flowers have a calyx tube with three short calyx lobes. The calyx is often densely scaly. The three petals are long, the cup overtop clear stand valvat, are leathery and short fused at the base. The six stamens are free, thick stamens. The anthers are long, basifix and latrors. The stamp rudiment is very small. The pollen grains are spherical and symmetrical. The germ opening is either a large distal pore or a short germ fold ( sulcus ). The longest axis is 54 to 65 microns long.

The female flowers are larger than the males. The calyx is tubular, short -lobed and often densely covered with scales. The crown is Roehrig in the lower third to half, the rest are three long lobes. The six staminodes are laterally grown on the flat, wide filaments with each other and grow together with the crown at the end of the corolla tube. The gynoecium is dreifächrig with three ovules. It is roundish, covered with vertical rows of recurved scales. The style is short and conical, he wears three scars. The ovules are anatrop and set basal to.

Fruit and seeds

The fruit is round, very large and usually one seed. The scars radicals apically. The exocarp is busy with many vertical rows of reddish- brown scales. The mesocarp is rather thick and fleshy, the endocarp is not differentiated. The seed is round, is close to the base, and has an obtuse apical beak. The seed coat is thin, the endosperm is homogeneous. The embryo sits basal.

Dissemination and locations

The two species occur in the Amazon Basin and adjacent areas: Trinidad, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, French Guiana and Brazil. They colonize the wetter areas here. Often forms extensive natural resources in periodically flooded areas of the lowlands.

System

The genus Mauritia is placed in the subfamily Calamoideae, Tribe Lepidocaryeae, subtribe Mauritiinae within the family Arecaceae. The monophyly of the genus has not yet been investigated.

In the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, two species are recognized:

• Mauritia Carana
• Mauritia flexuosa, the Buriti palm

The genus name honors the Count Johan Maurits Mauritia of Nassau - Siegen (1604-1679), Governor of the Dutch West India Company in Brazil.

Documents

• John Dransfield, Natalie W. Uhl, Conny B. Asmussen, William J. Baker, Madeline M. Harley, Carl E. Lewis: Genera palmarum. The Evolution and Classification of Palms. Second edition, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew 2008, ISBN 978-1-84246-182-2, pp. 161-165.