The Zamioculcas and Gonatopus
Online Library

Joseph Dalton Hooker (text) and Walter Hood Fitch (plate): Zamioculcas Loddigesii.
Tab. 5985 from Curtis's Botanical Magazine, Third Series, Vol. 28 (1872)

Tab. 5985.

ZAMIOCULCAS LODDIGESII.

Native of East Tropical Africa.

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Nat. Ord. AROIDEÆ.—Tribe, ORONTIEÆ.

Genus ZAMIOCULCAS, Decne. in Bull. Soc. Bot. France, vol. xvii. p. 321.

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Decaisne has well remarked of this most curious genus, in a letter addressed to the President of the Botanical Society of France, that it is not only singular in the family of plants to which it belongs, but in the whole class of Monocotyledons, in having a genuine pinnated leaf, with articulated caducous leaflets, as in various Dicotyledons. To this peculiarity may be added the singular clavate form of the base of the petiole, and the thickened false articulation, like that of a Marattia frond, about halfway between the lowest pinnule and base of the petiole. M. Decaisne describes the flowers in the lower half of the spadix as female and of the upper as male ; in the plant I find both stamens and pistils throughout the spadix, but the stamens appear perfect only on the lower half and the pistils on the upper ; furthermore, whilst the pistils of the lower half are flaggon-shaped, with a short style, and a basal anatropous or campylotropous ovule in each cell, those in the upper half having oblong ovaries, with sessile stigmas, sunk below the tips of the perianth-segments (hence concealed), and ovules adnate almost throughout their length to the septum.

The genus Zamioculcas is confined to eastern tropical Africa. Z. Loddigesii was introduced into the Horticultural Garden before 1828, probably by Forbes, and figured with a most imperfect description, by Loddiges, who supposed it to be a native of Brazil. Nothing more was known of it till it was introduced from Zanzibar into the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, where it flowered in 1869, and was subsequently described and published by M. Decaisne, together with another, also Zanzibar, species, Z. Boivinii, which exists in the Paris Herbarium and has bipinnate leaves. Our plants were received from that indefatigable naturalist Dr. Kirk, F.L.S., now H.B.M. V.-Consul at Zanzibar in 1870, and flowered in June, 1872.

Rhizome short ; horizontal, giving off large white sessile tubers, the size of a potato, from the crown of which proceed very stout fleshy simple fibres. Leaves all radical, springing from the axil of an ovate-lanceolate brown membranous sheath that soon withers ; petiole about two feet long, terete, clavate at the base, with a thickened false articulation some way below the leaflets, green, faintly marked with darker transverse bars ; leaflets six to eight pairs, three to six inches lomg, alternate, deciduous, the uppermost sometimes appearing terminal, as if the leaf were imparipinnate, obovate- or elliptic-lanceolate, acute or acuminate, subsessile or shortly petioled, bright green and shining above, nerves laxly reticulated, pale beneath ; midrib stout. Scape very short, stout. Spathe green, thick, lower part embracing the lower half of the spadix, blade about two inches long, boat shaped, with a dorsal horn below the apex. Spadix one and a half to two inches long, stout, cylindric, obtuse, constricted at the middle.  Flowers most densely crowded. Perianth-segments cubical or cuneate, very thick, concave in front and closely embracing the pistil. Stamens with subclavate flattened filaments and minute anthers that burst by longitudinal slits.—J. D. H.

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Fig. 1, Plant :—reduced ; 2, portion of ditto:—natural size ; 3, portion of petiole and leaflet ; 4, spadix ; 5, flower from lower part of the spadix ; 6, vertical section of young ditto ; 7, perianth, leaflet, and ovary of ditto ; 8, vertical section of female flower and perianth :—all magnified.

August 1st, 1872.