Echites yucatanensis
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| Echites yucatanensis | |
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| Echites yucatanensis leaves & flowers | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Clade: | Asterids |
| Order: | Gentianales |
| Family: | Apocynaceae |
| Genus: | Echites |
| Species: | E. yucatanensis |
| Binomial name | |
| Echites yucatanensis | |
| Synonyms | |
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Echites yucatanensis, with no commonly accepted English name, is a neotropical climbing species of flowering plant belonging to the family Apocynaceae.[1]
Echites yucatanensis displays these key features:[2]
- Climbing stems usually are woody at their bases but herbaceous at their tips.
- Leaves have egg-shaped to violin-shaped blades up to 12 cm long and 7 cm wide (~4¾ by 3¾ inches) and are of modestly thick, almost leathery texture. Blade tips are pointed.
- Inflorescences arise on peduncles up to 3 cm long (1⅕ inches), are produced along stem lengths, and comprise 3-10 flowers.
- Flower sepals are narrowly triangular and up to 7 mm long (~¼ inch). The white corollas consist of a narrow tube that abruptly expands in a flat-spreading top part (salverform), up to 10.2 cm long. Stamens are inserted at the tube's middle. There are two ovaries, fused at their styles, and nectaries surrounding the ovaries' bases are fused into cups whose rims may be notched by varying degrees.
- Follicle-type fruits are up to 29 cm long (~11⅖ inches). Seeds up to 22 mm long (~⅘ inch) are topped by tufts of hairs up to 3 cm long (~1⅕ inches).
Taxonomy
The name Echites yucatanensis was first proposed or informally described by Charles Frederick Millspaugh, but that work was not deemed to meet the requirements for valid publication. The name was validly named and described by Paul Carpenter Standley in 1930 with the resulting authorship designated at "Millsp. ex Standl".[1]
Standley's type specimen had been collected by George Franklin Gaumer, his #1979, from Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.[3]
Etymology
The genus name Echites is based on the Greek echis, which means "viper", and ites, meaning "of the nature of", alluding to the twining habit and deleterious quality of the genus's species.[4]
The species name yucatanensis refers to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. In 1930 when Standley described the species, the specimens he had available all were from the Peninsula.[3]
Distribution
Echites yucatanensis occurs from southern Mexico south into Nicaragua.[1][5][6].
An alternative distribution concept
Based on leaf shape, corolla tube length, nectary configuration, and accepting Echites turriger as a species distinct from Echites yucatanensis, sometimes Echites yucatanensis is regarded as endemic just to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.[7]