Wednesday 11 March 2009

Chamaerops humilis var. lusitanica

Chamaerops humilis var. lusitanica Becc., Webbia 5(1): 63 (1920).
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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This name is a synonym. Accepted Name: Chamaerops humilis var. humilis

http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/namedetail.do;jsessionid=C6678C138AB7BDF284AADCA509A7FA89?accepted_id=37800&repSynonym_id=-9998&name_id=37802&status=false

11 March 2009 at 17:44
Gerald Luckhurst said...

Thanks, this posting was more of an aide memoire - I want to try to find Beccari's original description of var. lusitanica.

There are some centenarian Chamaerops in the Avenida da Liberdade in Lisbon that I was photographing Tuesday. I'd like to write them up and thought it would be interesting to know why Beccari considered them distinct. They are certainly as tall as you could ever find - rather "humiliating" to be stuck with their official accepted name!

Gerald

11 March 2009 at 22:42
Anonymous said...

Do you see Chamaerops atlantica for sale near you ? It seems to be a name only used in the Algarve. It is not accepted by Kew. The picture on this page is intriguing, but not clear enough for me to be able to tell whether this is really distinct from, for example, "vulcano". http://www.algarveresident.com/story.asp?ID=12921 also http://www.flordosol.com/produtos.php?id=1597&lg=pt&letra=C

12 March 2009 at 05:44
Gerald Luckhurst said...

"Chamaerops is indeed a species of wide variation. The great Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari in his 1933 Asiatic Palms’ lists and describes 9 distinct varieties: arborescens, lusitanica, dactylocarpa, decipiens, sardoa, sicula, macrocarpa, hystrix and cerifera. There are doubtless many more distinct forms all, almost certainly the same single species. The most beautiful is surely ‘Cerifera’" Martin Gibbons.

See http://www.pacsoa.org.au/palms/Chamaerops/humilisVarCerifera.html

I always thought that this was a fairly recent discovery. I first plants that I bought were around year 2000. But if Beccari named it can't be so and the Pacso site shows cultivated whoppers. The Algarve 'atlantida' palm must have an invented commercial name. Volcano is a distinct neat growing short leaved cultivar. I met the originator at his nursery Faro in Catania Sicily - I think he named it for Etna, rather than the island of Volcano. I'll never forget that trip - the only time I've ever seen a volcano in active eruption.

Gerald

12 March 2009 at 10:27
Gerald Luckhurst said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
12 March 2009 at 10:28

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