156 



MEMOIRS OF THE NEW YORK BOTANICAL GARDEN 



[VOL. 10 



Ravenia ruellioides Oliver, Timehri 5: 191. 1886. 



R. tatei Gleason, Bull. Torrey Club 58: 376. 1931. 



E. ruellioides yar. ptariana Steyerm. Fieldiana Bot. 28: 273. 1952. 



VENEZUELA: Bolivar: Cerro Guaiquinima, Eio Paragua, B. Maguire 32941, 32964, 

 33088, 33089. 



Iii addition to these collections, several others have been made in the Gran 

 Sabana area and five were reported from Cerro Sipapo in Part I of "Botany of 

 the Guyana Highland. " At the time of that publication, the species appeared to 

 be rather uniform, but this large number of subsequent collections has revealed 

 significant variation in both vegetative and fertile parts. With the large scries 

 of collections now available for study, it is at once obvious that Steyermark's 

 variety is completely untenable; the characters he uses (op. cit. 273) to separate 

 the taxa of Guayana from each other are perhaps the most variable ones : the 

 lengths of the flowering peduncle and of the corollas vary widely and the pubes- 

 eence on the lower surfaces of the leaves is just as unreliable for taxonomic 

 purposes. 



Gleason separated his species (R. tatei) on the relatively broader, shorter 

 petioled leaves which are more or less obtuse basally, smaller flowers with 

 glandular sepals, etc. Parts of some of the collections cited above could possibly 

 be referred to this species but none could be wholly. More detailed studies in 

 the genus may indicate the desirability of recognizing this group at some level, 

 but 1 cannot ; it is seemingly only a variant of the variable R. ruellioides. 



