Oryctanthus
Content
Description
Leafy parasitic shrubs, glabrous but young twigs often strongly furfuraceous; epicortical roots from base of plant but not from stems, sometimes lacking at least at maturity. Leaves paired, often leathery; venation palmate or pinnate, containing characteristic stellate fiber bundles along smaller veins. Inflorescences solitary in leaf axil or sometimes clustered, sometimes arranged in a terminal, compound, squamate inflorescence, individually a spike, flowers sessile in cavities of often swollen axis, each flower subtended by 2 minute, acute, strap-shaped bracteoles. Flowers bisexual, small, 6-merous (in the Guianas species), yellow to dark red; petals and stamens dimorphic; pollen with 3 circular depressions on each face; style straight, with scarcely differentiated stigma. Fruit green, yellow-green, red to purple or black; endosperm copious, white or yellowish; mature seed with fleshy, dicotylous embryo, cotyledons massive, haustorial disk well differentiated.
Distribution
Guianas present, Jamaica present, Northern America: Mexico Southeast (Chiapas present, Tabasco present), Southern America, north-eastern Bolivia present, northern half of Brazil present, southern Mexico present
Southern Mexico ( Tabasco&Chiapas), through Central America to north-eastern Bolivia and the northern half of Brazil, with a population of O. occidentalis on Jamaica; taxonomically distinctive genus with 11 often inconspicuous species; 3 in the Guianas.
Notes
In addition to the 3 species treated below, it is possible that O. spicatus (Jacq.) Eichler also occurs in the Guianas. It is very close to O. florulentus (in fact, it may intergrade with it W of the Guianas) but is more slender and usually smaller, its spikes having rather long and slender peduncles, and its fruits somewhat smaller and more rounded at the tip.
An additional species,O. cordifolius (C. Presl) Urb. , was previously reported for Guyana (Kuijt 1976), but this appears to be an error.
An additional species,