American pokeweed
Phytolacca americana
Phytolacca americana, commonly known as American pokeweed, is a large herbaceous perennial native to North …
Goudot's pokeweed (Phytolacca goudotii)
Silhouette: T. Michael Keesey
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Phytolacca goudotii: Madagascar's enigmatic pokeweed and taxonomy
Phytolacca goudotii is a woody plant native to the humid evergreen forests of Madagascar, bearing smooth, leathery leaves and inconspicuous, petalless flowers arranged in small axillary clusters. Its specific epithet goudotii honors Jules Prosper Goudot, the nineteenth-century French naturalist and explorer who collected the original specimens in Madagascar during the 1830s.
In classic botanical databases, this taxon is cataloged within the pokeweed family, Phytolaccaceae, where Swiss botanist John Isaac Briquet formally placed it when describing the species in 1900. Subsequent herbarium revisions of Goudot's type specimen revealed that its unisexual flowers and paired carpels actually match the endemic Malagasy tree Didymeles integrifolia, making Phytolacca goudotii a fascinating taxonomic bridge in the history of Madagascar's flora.
Taxonomy
- ∟ царство Plantae
- ∟ division Tracheophytes (Vascular Plants)
- ∟ subdivision Spermatophytes (Seed plants)
- ∟ Angiosperms
- ∟ mesangiosperms (Core angiosperms)
- ∟ eudicots
- ∟ core eudicots
- ∟ Superasterids
- ∟ order Caryophyllales
- ∟ family Phytolaccaceae (Pokeweed family)
- ∟ genus Phytolacca (Pokeweed)
- ∟ species Phytolacca goudotii (Goudot's pokeweed)
Morphology
Habit and foliage
Unlike the familiar herbaceous pokeweeds of temperate regions, the plant documented from Goudot's Malagasy collections is a woody shrub or small evergreen tree with smooth, glabrous branchlets. Its leaves are arranged alternately along the stems and lack stipules (small basal appendages).
- Leaf blades: The blades are elliptic to obovate with an entire (smooth and untoothed) margin and a firm, coriaceous (leathery) texture suited to humid forest canopies.
- Venation: A prominent central midrib gives rise to delicate lateral veins that loop neatly before reaching the leaf edge.
Reproductive structures
- Inflorescences: Small, unisexual flowers without petals (apetalous) are borne in short racemes or panicles emerging from the leaf axils.
- Carpels and fruit: Female flowers feature a superior ovary reduced to just one or two distinct carpels (seed-bearing chambers) crowned by broad, sessile stigmas, ripening into fleshy, drupe-like fruitlets with a longitudinal groove.
Interesting facts
How a Malagasy forest tree disguised itself as a pokeweed
When Swiss botanist John Isaac Briquet examined Jules Goudot's dried nineteenth-century specimens from Madagascar in the Geneva herbarium, the small, petalless flowers with separate floral segments closely resembled an anomalous woody member of the genus Phytolacca. This convergence in simplified floral architecture illustrates how distantly related plants adapting to wind or generalist insect pollination in dense tropical canopies can arrive at remarkably similar functional designs.
- Streamlined apetalous flowers: By dispensing with showy petals and nectar spurs, the tiny flowers invest their metabolic energy directly into pollen and ovule production, allowing compact axillary inflorescences to function efficiently in the shaded understory of eastern Madagascar's rainforests.
- Twin-carpel mechanics: While typical members of Phytolacca arrange multiple carpels in a ring like slices of an orange, the Malagasy specimen pairs its carpels with broad, cushion-like stigmas angled to capture airborne or micro-insect pollen grains across a wide surface area.
Geography of distribution
- Madagascar
Sources
See also
Ombu
Phytolacca dioica
Phytolacca dioica, known as the ombú, is a massive South American plant with a broad …
Indian pokeweed
Phytolacca acinosa
An upright perennial herb from the Himalayas and East Asia, notable for its rigid spikes …
Button pokeweed
Phytolacca icosandra
A tall neotropical perennial herb in the pokeweed family bearing dense cylindrical spikes of flowers …