Ronnbergia
brasiliensis Pereira & Penna n. sp.
Subgenus Ronnbergia .
Plant
: flowering about 50 cm high, rosulate, forming
tubular tank at the base, 10 cm long.
Leaves : ligulate, 30 to 50 cm long, not peciolate.
Sheaths
: narrowly ovate, 6 to 10 cm long, internally
purpureous, externally green, inconspicuously lepidote at both sides.
Blades : linear, about 35 cm long, 12 mm maximum width, caniculate, apex narrowly spinose, green to purpurescent at both sides, inconspicuously lepidote;
margin sparsely spiny to entire, with 1 mm long spines.
Scape : erect, 17 cm long, 3 mm diameter, green glabrous, 15 to 25 mm long.
Scape
bracts : lanceolate-acuminate, 30 to 40 mm long,
glabrous, the size of the internodes.
Inflorescence
: simple or compound, laxly spicate, bearing 2 or 3
small branches at the base when compound, 5 to 10 cm long, exceeding the leaves.
Floral
bracts : ovate, apiculate, 4 mm long, very nerved,
shorter or equaling the ovary.
Flowers
: sub-erect, 20 mm long.
Sepals : purple, very asymmetric, never carinate, 9 mm long, mucronate, 2 mm
connate at base.
Petals : Purple, blades elliptic, open at anthesis, 14 mm long, not ligulate,
bearing 2 ascending callosities when alive, which vanish when dry.
Stamens
: facing the corolla at anthesis, or lightly
prominent.
Filaments : complanate, , acute apex, free at series I, highly adnate to petals
at series II.
Anthers
: sub-linear, 4 mm long, apiculate at apex, dorsifixed
near the base.
Pollen : pollen grains elliptic, biporate.
Ovary
: sub-globose, 4 mm thick, glabrous.
Epigynous
tube : 2 mm long.
Style : 11 mm long, equaling the anthers.
Placentae
: fixed to locule apex.
Ovules : obtuse.
Typus
: Brazil , Rio de Janeiro State, Municipality of Ilhéus, collected by Elton M. C. Leme, nº
271, on the 20th July, 1982, with
simple inflorescence, Holotypus
at Herbarium Bradeanum HB, series I;
series II collected by André M. de Carvalho, nº 1349, base
compound
inflorescence, Paratypus at
CEPEC, Herbarium of the Centre for Cocoa Research, Bahia, Brasil.
Comments
: species very near to Ronnbergia columbiana E.
Morren , differing by the size of sepals and petals, scape and rachis glabrous,
stamens from series II highly adnate to petals, leaf blades almost entire and narrower.
Published : in Bulletin nº 62, February
1985, from the Botanical Museum of the Municipality of Curitiba, Paraná State,
Brazil, Pg. 1 and 2, figure 1, Pg. 5 .
Complementary comments : we have a plant from the original collection by Elton Leme, which flowered in April 2000, with a compound inflorescence. We are adding complementary drawings and color photos of this plant.