Re: [aroid-l] Rapateaceae - not so offtopic

From: Piabinha at aol.com on 2003.02.03 at 21:31:24(9920) oi edu, tudo bem? obrigado to you and to julius for the responses. i've asked this because this is such an incredible and beautiful family of plants, i'd thought some of the hardcore aroiders would be growing something from this family. the first time i heard of this family was while visiting the smithsonian greenhouses a few years back and saw a plant (not in bloom) of a Stegolepis sp. the fan-shaped leaves were so striking, like nothing i've seen before. in 2001, while traveling in Minas Gerais State in brazil, we ran into a couple of botanists from the california academy of sciences, doing work on Melastomataceae, and they had collected many other plants in the "campo rupestre," one of which they showed to me and he said it was a Rapateaceae. it was a small bulbous plant with rather large yellow flowers. no idea of what genus it might have been, although they said it might be Stegolepis, but it looked so different from the one i saw at the smithsonian that i wasn't really sure. in any case, the smithsonian webpage has a plant of the week feature, and you can search there for the 2 Rapateceae in their gallery, including the aforementioned Stegolepis. http://persoon.si.edu/plofweek/index.cfm (go to the search function) enjoy! +More -- tsuh yang

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