Myrmecodia p. platytyrea

[Stone Jaguar]

Greetings:

 

I have two, three year-old plus plants originally accessed from commercial sources that appear to belong to the nominate subspecies of Myrmecodia platytyrea. Unlike the southern plants that I have grown from several sources since 2006 ostensibly from both Mossman Gorge and the Far-Far Northern Queensland, these plants are very cold sensitive and rather slow-growing. Both have recently started flowering, and have the distinctive small, "pin" shaped corollas described and illustrated in H&J 1993. 

 

The plant in the upper image is apparently a descendant of a plant originally collected on the Sepik River of PNG by the well-known Venezuelan nurseryman, Enrique Graf, and distributed in the U.S. by Tropiflora under their #2998.

 

The smaller plant with orange petioles is an offspring of a large plant grown by a well-known SE Asian collector that looks almost identical to the wild plants in the images posted here by Andreas under the "Biak Island" topic dealing with this species. While the arrangement of and morphology of the clypeoli is as described as diagnostic for the species, the leaves are quite different. Besides the shape and relative size, the leaves are chartaceous, not semi-succulent like those of all the other M. platytyrea I grow.

 

I have included several images below of the plants and their leaves for comparison with other images of M. platytyrea on the forum.

 

J

 

 

 

 

[Stone Jaguar]

For comparative purposes, I have attached an image below of three M. platytyrea plants from different sources. All of these plants are about three and one half years old from seed. From left (M. platytyrea antoinii "Mossman Gorge") to right (M. cf. p. platytyrea), basket size is 20 cm, 15 cm and 10 cm. These plants have been grown alongside one another for most of their lives...the plant on the right was moved to a warm greenhouse late last year after suffering considerable cosmetic leaf damage maladaptation to shadier, cooler conditions.

 

In spite of the wide variation in caudex morphology evident in these plants, all share the small flowers and spine-fringed, "eye-dot" clypeoli that are characteristic of M. platytyrea as currently defined.

 

J

 

[Stone Jaguar]

Caudex details of both of the putative M. p. platytyrea shown below. The caudex in the upper image is almost a dead ringer for that in the illustration in H&J 1993, with short spines concentrated on ridges. The parent of the inermous-caudex, orange petiole young plant shown here is also essentially spineless at large, mature size with a few conspicuous entrance holes evident on the upper part of the caudex.