Ceropegia plocamoides (Oliv.) Bruyns

Bruyns, Peter V., Klak, Cornelia & Hanáček, Pavel, 2018, An account of Ceropegia sect. Chamaesiphon (Apocynaceae) in Moçambique with new records and two new species, Phytotaxa 364 (2), pp. 111-135 : 127-128

Ceropegia plocamoides (Oliv.) Bruyns ( Figs. 14–16 )

Brachystelma mortonii Walker (1981: 66) , syn. nov. Brachystelma parviflorum Morton (1979: 499) , non B. parviflorum (Wight 1834: 35) Hooker (1883: 65) .

Ceropegia plocamoides was described from material collected by the explorers John H. Speke and James A. Grant in dry forest of central Tanzania in 1861. Bullock (1963) also recorded it from Zambia and Zimbabwe and Masinde (2007) mentioned its occurrence in D.R. Congo and Malawi but did not cite any corroborating material. Percy-Lancaster (1997) recorded it fairly widely in Zimbabwe.

Ceropegia plocamoides was mentioned by Meve & Porembski (1993) as being very similar to ‘ Brachystelma mortonii ’ from West Africa. According to them, the ‘short and solid, relatively succulent petals bearing a nose-like, pyramidal projection on their distal half’ of ‘ B. mortonii ’ provided the ‘most important distinguishing feature’ between the two species. For C. plocamoides they gave the corolla-lobes as 7–15 (20) × (2) 3–5 mm, while in ‘ B. mortonii ’ they gave them as 3–9 × 3–5 mm. In C. plocamoides the corolla was ‘rotate, not fully expanded, lobes somewhat erect’ which is contradictory, since ‘rotate’ means ‘spreading, almost flat’ (Stearn 1983). Their fig. 1 shows that the corolla of their material of ‘ B. mortonii ’ was also ‘not fully expanded’ so that there was no difference here. The specimen cited below and shown in Fig. 14 , from central Moçambique also has short and broad (± 2.5 × 2.0 mm), longitudinally thickened and folded corolla-lobes with a ‘nose-like’ protrusion in the middle and so it corresponds quite closely to ‘ B. mortonii ’, supposedly endemic to West Africa, but it could equally well be placed under C. plocamoides . Consequently ‘ B. mortonii ’ is reduced to synonymy here, making C. plocamoides widely, if scantily, distributed from central Moçambique ( Fig. 15) to Tanzania and as far as Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria in West Africa. To show the extent of variation in C. plocamoides , we illustrate ( Fig. 16 ) another collection from Malawi (E. Specks 21615) where the corolla was much larger, very dark and rugulose inside and the coronal lobes also much larger and with their tips protruding slightly from between the corolla-lobes.

The single specimen seen in Moçambique was found in low-lying Brachystegia Bentham (in Bentham & Hooker 1865: 582)-forest with sparse undergrowth, together with a species of Aloe , Cynanchum viminale , two species of Kalanchoe and several epiphytic orchids in the trees.

Figures

FIGURE 14. Ceropegia plocamoides. A, side view of flower (scale 2 mm); B, oblique view of flower (scale of C = 1 mm); C, side view of dissected flower (scale 1 mm); D, pollinarium (scale of C = 0.25 mm). Drawn from: Bruyns 8749 (MO).

FIGURE 16. Ceropegia plocamoides. A, side view of flower (scale 2 mm); B, face view of gynostegium (scale 2 mm); C, pollinarium (scale 0.25 mm). Drawn from: Malawi, Specks 21615 (no specimen).