Barthlottia

Barthlottia madagascariensis is the only species in the genus Barthlottia of flowering plants in the family Scrophulariaceae. The large shrub with conspicuous purple flowers is native to a very restricted area in southeast Madagascar and was described in 1996.

Barthlottia
Barthlottia madagascariensis: Inflorescence and solitary flower at the type locality in Madagascar - Fotos Charles Rakotovao, Tropicos ®
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Lamiales
Family: Scrophulariaceae
Tribe: Limoselleae
Genus: Barthlottia
Eb.Fisch.
Species:
B. madagascariensis
Binomial name
Barthlottia madagascariensis
Eb.Fisch.

Description

Shrubs are up to 3 m. The elliptic-lanceolate opposite leaves are up to 15 cm long. Terminal inflorescences have up to 15 conspicuous 5-lobed bell shaped flowers, which are up to 4 cm long and purplish-red.[1]

Habitat and history

Madagascar is rich in species,[2] which only inhabit this island (endemics). Barthlottia is such an endemic species and only occurs in a region of about 30 x 30 km in SW Madagascar, about 45 km NW of Tolagnaro (Ft. Dauphin) on Inselbergs and rock outcrops (Fischer & Theisen 2000) on the Anosy mountains. The sites are mostly located within the Andohahela National Park (Unesco World Heritage).

The restricted and remote habitat is probably the reason why till today only less than six collections of Barthlottia are known.[2][3] The rather conspicuous plant was collected for the first time in 1947 by the French botanist Jean-Henri Humbert, but remained unrecognized in the herbarium of the Musée d´Histoire Naturelle in Paris. Later in 1996 Barthlottia was finally described by the German botanist Eberhard Fischer as a new genus and species.[3] It was named in honor of the botanist and biomimetics scientist Wilhelm Barthlott, who had been interested in the Vegetation of the Inselbergs of Madagascar.[4] E. Fischer discovered over the last decades many new species, under them the world smallest waterlily (Nymphaea thermarum).

Taxonomy

Barthlottia belongs to the tribe Limoselleae (former Manuleae) within the foxglove family Scrophulariaceae. Molecular data[5][6] confirm the relatively isolated systematic position. Barthlottia seems to have no closer relatives in Madagascar and resembles distantly the Namibian Manuelopsis dinteri.

References
  1. Fischer, E. (1996). Barthlottia, a new monotypic genus of Scrophulariaceae-Manuleae from Madagascar. Bull. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat., B, Adansonia 18: 351–356
  2. Goodmann, S. M., Benstead, J. O. (2003). Natural History of Madagascar – University of Chicago Press
  3. Madagascar Catalogue (2018). Catalogue of the Plants of Madagascar. Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, U.S.A. & Antananarivo, Madagascar Accessed: February, 2018
  4. Fischer, E., Theisen, I. (2000). Vegetation of Malagasy Inselbergs – in: Porembski S., Barthlott, W. (Eds): Inselbergs, Biotic Diversity of Isolated Rock outcrops – Springer Publishers, Heidelberg – New York
  5. Schäferhoff B., Fleischmann, A, Fischer, E., Albach, D.C., Borsch, T., Heubl, G, Müller, K.F. (2010). Towards resolving Lamiales relationships: insights from rapidly evolving chloroplast sequences. BMC Evolutionary Biology 10, 352–362
  6. Kornhall, P., Bremer, B. (2004). New circumscription of the tribe Limoselleae (Scrophulariaceae) that includes the taxa of the tribe Manuleeae. Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 146, 453–467
  • Illustration in Bulletin du Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle Section B, Adansonia, botanique, phytochimie 1996
  • Index of Eponymic Plant Names. Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin, Berlin 2018.
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