Paliavana gracilis

1. Mauro's plant
2. My plant
3. Update
4. Feature table
5. External link
6. Publication and etymology

Mauro's plant

The photograph at the right was taken in the greenhouse of Mauro Peixoto in Mogi das Cruzes, São Paulo State, Brazil, in April 1999.  The plant is therefore an autumn bloomer, since April in the southern hemisphere corresponds to October in the northern hemisphere.  As can be seen, this a shrub and probably not a good light-garden candidate.

This photograph shows flowers and flowerbuds on the same plant.  There are several interesting things to be seen in this picture.

The flowers are campanulate and thus probably bee-pollinated.  The "campanulate flowers" feature has been used to distinguish paliavanas (non-tuberous sinningias with campanulate flowers) from vanhoutteas (non-tuberous sinningias with tubular flowers).

The calyx lobes are long and narrow and separate for most of their length.  There are two good calyx examples visible in the picture after the corolla has fallen -- one in front of the stem at center right, and the second just to the left of the stem at the bottom of the picture.  They give a good image of the spiky calyx lobes.

The developing flowerbud at the lower right of the picture, with the flimsy calyx lobes hovering around the unopened corolla, and the even less-developed flowerbud just underneath the left purple flower show that this species is a member of the "free calyx lobes vanhouttea clade", even though it's a paliavana.  As it happens, the plant right next to it, visible in the left half of the photo, is something different.  See the flowerbud at the upper left in the picture.  The calyx completely encloses the developing flowerbud.  This feature and the white wool surrounding the flowerbud mark this as Vanhouttea lanata.

See?  All that technical stuff comes in handy sometimes.

My plant

I have a plant of P. gracilis (however: see below), but don't know much about it yet, however, so stay tuned.  With a name like gracilis, it should be pretty good.

Just avoid the temptation to say graCILis.  Accent is on the first syllable: GRAcilis.

Plants grow better when you pronounce their names right. Honest.

Update

Unfortunately, it turns out that the proper pronunciation of the name of my plant is Vanhouttea lanata.  Even though it did not have the characteristic woolly stems and leafbacks of Vanhouttea lanata, it did have, when it bloomed in November 2007, woolly calyx lobes and the calyx lobes completely enclosing the developing corolla, a feature characteristic of the V. lanata - V. brueggeri - Paliavana tenuiflora group, and not of P. gracilis, which is a member of the "free calyx lobes vanhouttea clade".  A picture on the Paliavana tenuiflora page shows what is meant by "calyx lobes completely enclosing the developing corolla".  An idea of what the flowerbud would have looked like if the plant were P. gracilis and had free calyx lobes can be seen in a picture on the Vanhouttea pendula page.

It's not impossible the plant label got switched last winter (January-March 2007) when so many of my outdoor plants got moved around to separate the ones which were (or appeared to be) dead after the Five Night Freeze.

Feature table for Paliavana gracilis

External Link

For some habitat pictures and information, see the page on Mauro Peixoto's web site.

Publication

Paliavana gracilis was first published by Martius (1829) as Gloxinia gracilis.  Alain Chautems transferred it to Paliavana in 2002.  Chautems points out that the original publication cited as locality (what is now) Rio de Janeiro state, where P. gracilis has never been collected since, and mentioned a tuber, which no subsequently collected or cultivated material of P. gracilis has ever exhibited.  He therefore suggests that the original publication was actually that of a form of Sinningia speciosa, whose wild-type "slipper" flowers bear a resemblance to those of P. gracilis.

Jon Lindstrom and I each had a plant we thought was P. gracilis but turned out to be Vanhouttea lanata.  Martius, almost 200 years ago, had a plant he thought was Something gracilis, but most likely was Sinningia speciosa.  Do we see a pattern here?

Etymology: Latin gracilis ("slim, slender").  See the pronunciation guide.