safford: classification of rollinia 371 



An examination of herbarium material and of fruits of several 

 species introduced into Florida by the Office of Foreign Seed 

 and Plant Introduction, United States Department of Agricul- 

 ture, shows that certain longstanding errors should be corrected 

 and that the genus needs revision. 



It may be well to point out, in connection with the plants 

 above mentioned, that Annona obtusiflora was described by De 

 Tussac in 1808 from a cultivated plant growing in an orchard 

 near the western extremity of Haiti, and was regarded by Baillon 

 as a synonym of Rollinia mucosa, a species based on Jacquin's 

 Annona mucosa growing wild and in cultivation on the island of 

 Martinique. The biribd, which Correa, in his recent Flora do 

 Brazil, identifies with Martius's Duguetia Marcgraviana, must 

 be a Rollinia; it cannot possibly belong to the genus Duguetia, 

 since its fruit does not, as in Duguetia, consist of separate carpels 

 borne on the indurated receptacle, but is an edible syncarpium 

 with fleshy pulp from which a fermented drink is sometimes made. 1 

 The only Brazilian species of Rollinia introduced into Florida 

 under the name Rollinia orthopetala which has yielded a large 

 edible fruit .cannot possibly be the true R. orthopetala A. DC, 

 since its flowers are not like the flowers of that species, but have 

 their outer corolla lobes broadly spreading and curving downward, 

 instead of " erect and incurved," as described by De Candolle. 

 Correa, in the work cited, refers the biribd of Pernambuco and 

 Matto Grosso to Duguetia Marcgraviana Mart, and the biribd 

 of Para to Rollinia orthopetala A. DC. 



FLOWERS OF ROLLINIA 



The flowers of Rollinia differ from those of Annona in having a 

 gamopetalous corolla composed of three large outer lobes and 

 three minute inner lobes alternating with them. The large 

 lobes, corresponding to the outer petals of Annona, are produced 

 into wings or spurs, the form of which differs so widely that they 

 offer a convenient basis for classification. In the accompany- 

 ing illustration (fig. 1) the principal types of Rollinia flowers are 



1 "Os fructos sao comestiveis e submettidos a fermentacao ,dao bebida vinosa." 

 — M. Pio Correa. Flora do Brazil, p. 22. 1909. 



