Seeds of Amazonian Plants

187 Pages·2016·15.49 MB·English

by  Fernando Cornejo

Seeds of Amazonian Plants
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FERNANDO CORNEJO
AND
JOHN JANOvEC
Seeds of Amazonian Plants
P  R  I  N  C  E  T  O  N   U  N  I   V  E  R  S  I  T   Y   P  R  E  S  S  P  R  I  N  C  E  T  O  N   A  N  D   O  X  F  O  R  D
Copyright © 2010 by Princeton University Press
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be 
sent to Permissions, Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, 
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, 
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All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cornejo, Fernando, 1958–
  Seeds of Amazonian plants / Fernando Cornejo and John Janovec.
    p. cm. — (Princeton field guides)
  ISBN 978-0-691-11929-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-691-14647-8 
(pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Tropical plants—Seeds—Amazon River Region—Identification. 
  2. Plants—Amazon River Region—Identification.  3. Seeds—Amazon River Region—Morphology.   
I. Janovec, John.   II. Title. 
  QK241.C67 2010
  58198—dc22        2010005269
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in ITC Cheltenham and Gill Sans
Printed on acid-free paper. ∞
nathist.princeton.edu
Printed in the United States of America
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1
Fernando Cornejo dedicates this book to his family, especially his 
daughter Jessenia. John Janovec dedicates this book to his family, 
especially his wife, Madeleine, and their two boys, Silvestre and  
J. W. Garvie, and to the memory of Dr. Theodore M. Barkley 
(1936–2004).
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Contents
FOREWORD  ix
PREFACE  xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  xiii
INTRODUCTION  xv
COLLECTING AND IDENTIFyING SEEDS  xvii
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK  xix
AID TO IDENTIFICATION OF AMAZONIAN SEEDS  xxi
FAMILy AND GENUS DESCRIPTIONS  1
GLOSSARy AND ILLUSTRATIONS OF BOTANICAL TERMINOLOGy  149
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Foreword
Tropical forests are notorious for the bewilder- major intellectual advances, many of them pio-
ing diversity of trees they contain. Some Ama- neered by Gentry himself.
zonian and Bornean forests support more than Before Gentry and a few others like him, bot-
300 species of trees per hectare among ap- anists identified tropical trees using minute
proximately 600 trunks. Every other tree, in and obscure characteristics of flowers. If a tree
other words, is a species not encountered pre- encountered in the field wasn’t flowering (more
viously. At larger scales such forests often con- than 90 percent aren’t on a given day), then for-
tain over 1,000 species. This formidable diver- get it. You weren’t going to find out what it was.
sity has constituted a leading scientific mystery Gentry changed that by studying vegetative
and at the same time has presented daunting characters in greater depth than anyone before
obstacles to researchers. Mastering the diver- him. Did the bark have an odor? Did it gush col-
sity is a necessary first step to understanding ored sap when nicked? Did the leaves have
the processes that generate and perpetuate it. stipules, hairs, teeth, translucent punctations?
Yet that first step was slow in coming be- Through careful analysis of vegetative charac-
cause of the formidable challenges of identify- teristics, Gentry showed that nearly every spe-
ing trees in remote parts of the tropics. cies possesses a distinct and recognizable
As recently as the 1970s, it was conventional combination of characters that separates it
wisdom among botanists that the trees of from all others. These details, along with a sys-
highly diverse tropical forests could not be tematic methodology for applying them, were
identified in the field. There were too many published in a monumental book in 1993 and
species and, in particular, too many that that book has forever changed the way re-
looked alike and could be confused. The only searchers approach the study of tropical
reliable way to identify trees was to collect forests.
specimens in fruit or in flower, bring them to There is a parallel story to be told about re-
the herbarium, and compare them, side-by- searchers striving to understand why tropical
side, with specimens previously identified by forests are composed of so many tree species,
specialists. This widely held opinion presented and how the remarkable diversity of species is
an almost insurmountable barrier to those reconstituted generation after generation. At
wishing to study forests in situ. If one were to first, investigators began with the obvious and
submit an article based on in-the-field identifi- concentrated on the trees. But soon it became
cation, it would promptly be rejected by “ex- apparent that trees, being established and
perts” who would claim the data were unreli- more or less permanent fixtures of the land-
able because, of course, identification of trees scape, did not reveal many secrets. Then, be-
in the field was impossible. ginning in 1979, the purview was extended
It took one intrepid botanist, possessed of down to the level of saplings. A new rush of in-
extraordinary energy and inextinguishable op- sights was obtained as investigators studied the
timism, to break down this barrier. Today, Al- dynamics of the transition from sapling to
wyn Gentry, is a legend, his life tragically cut adult, but the fundamental mystery of diversity
short by an airplane accident. Much of the remained intact. Now, more recently, mostly
work he did to prove to the world that tropical since 2000, emphasis has shifted to the earliest
trees could indeed be identified in the field stages of the tree life cycle, to seeds, how seeds
was carried out in the Peruvian Amazon. Now, are distributed by dispersers, and under what
30 years later, field identification of tropical circumstances seeds of each kind are most
trees is routine and being practiced all over the successful.
world. But few people in our technologically- Now that research is focused on the seed-
driven world appreciate that the newly ac- seedling-sapling transition, investigators have
quired ability to identify tropical trees rests on hit another technological barrier, for there is no