I can't seem to even identify the family of this plant species. Any help would be appreciated.
That was my first thought as well, but it does not match any of the species of the genus Trapa for the following reasons:
1) This species did not have inflated petioles (aerenchymatous floats) nor do I remember it having an anchored stem. Although I think Trapa can be free floating at maturity.
2) It was not heterophyllous; it only had one kind of leaf that was aerial/emergent and no submerged leaves. It did have what looked like non-photosynthetic (white) roots at the nodes (see image)
In addition, I encountered it in southern Mexico and Trapa is from the Old World (I know it is invasive in the US, but I'm not sure if Trapa has been reported as an invasive in Mexico).
I would say Trapa too.... For what it's worth, because I don't know the species very well...
Trapa has alternate phyllotaxy; from top view, this plant appears to have opposite phyllotaxy. Does your plant have opposite or alternate phyllotaxy?
at least Trapa has been spotted in the US...
http://blog.epa.gov/healthywaters/2011/08/invasion-of-the-european-water-chestnut/
and it does not look dissimilar to your sample.
It is not Trapa. Looks a bit like Trapella but no cauline leaves. Have you seen any open flowers? The bud has a scrophish look (Plantaginaceae) to it. Conobea??
It is certainly not Trapa - the habitus is very similar but the flower and the details of the leaves not. There exist a genus Trapella. I tried to search it in google and found only Trapella sinensis (e.g. here - http://blog.naver.com/PostView.nhn?blogId=ssgb3&logNo=134379396&categoryNo=8&viewDate=¤tPage=1&listtype=0&from=postList). It is certainly the different species than your plant but may be it could be the same genus or the family. In Mabberley's Plant book I found there are 1/2 species of Trapella in Eastern Asia but may be there can be some new in Mexico? Or it is at least the same family - Pedaliaceae (syn. Trapellaceae). According to Mabberly, this family is relative to Scrophulariaceae - and I have to say, the second species (except of Trapa) which came in my head after the first view of the photos, was Lindernia dubia (rather similar tops of stems with leaves and the flower of similar colour :-)). OK, I hope you will find the name of this interesting plant - good luck!
I've never been to Mexico but how about Trapella sinensis? I have seen it once and I I think it has opposite leaves and pink flowers and your buds are pink.
I also think that it is Trapa natans, the fact that there are no inflated petioles (aerenchymatous floats) is normal because this character appears after the flowering (to maintain the buoyancy with the extra weight of the fruits).
The anatomic structure of the submerged leaves of Trapa natans are similar to roots and very thin, we don't see it very well on your pictures but what you call roots could be submerged leaves. Hope it can helps.
Trapella, no, leaves decussate! It's probably Ludwigia sedoides!
Interesting, i thought it was Trapa too, at first, but the leaf lower shape appears more curved and less angular than Trapa genus.. also Trapa has central venation, while this picture has like a palmate venation..at the same time, leaves appear thicker and more whorled than Trapella..
The venation is more linear (like in Pistia), so it could not be Trapa or Trapella. But, in fact, I have no other idea...
True, venation points to monocots. Leaf arrangement is not really clear either! We need more info, any pix from underneath!? ... and while we all enjoy these "guessing games", it would of course be essential to know WHERE you got this from.
This not a monocot. It is not Trapa either. Something in Plantaginaceae (Scrophs) would be my guess.
Yes, I am thinking Maria do Carmo Amaral is correct. It does look like Ludwigia sedoides.
Look, Dan, you got half the World involved now, maybe it's time to provide some details for us now! Right!?
I first put Trapa but I have to say that angiosperms are not my field, I just remembered to have seen in a botanical garden something similar with that name. Now, I've been checking some of all your other proposals. My conclusion fits that of Theodor: more details are needed (flowers!). Sorry
Thank you all for your suggestions. It's clearly not Pistia stratiotes or any species of Ludwigia.
It is definitely not Pistia stratiotes. The leaves look like Trapa. Looks for unsual sharp pointed fruits. You may have to dissect the flower and do some taxonomic keying.
Dan, we were asking for where you got this from! ... but anyway, at the end of the day, I guess you got a Trapa! The flower clearly looks like one, and the only reservations everybody had was the venation, but if Andy says he's seen em like that, then ... well, he's probably right!
Ludwigia sedoides (Onagraceae) - However, if the specimen with flowers, can be confirmed the identity.
I took this picture in southern Mexico in a freshwater wetlands. Many individuals were connect via runners, so not Trapa. Also, I never found any spiny fruit characteristic of Trapa and I spent 14 months at this field site.
It is clearly Trapa. different species may be? I don't know. I have seen like these in flood plain wetlands of Brahmaputra river basin, Assam India.
Dear Daniel, I guess you got a Trapa! We have Trapa natans in Serbia.
It is surely Trapa (1-45 species according to Kubitzki, The families and genera of vascular plants), probably Trapa natans. It's a major invasive in eastern North American rivers, but rare and to be protected in Europe, especially northern Italy.
At first glance the plant seems Trapa, the habit and the white buds, but looking at the leaf venation, leaf arrangement and the lack of submersed leaves, they do not correspond to the Trapa features. It does not fit to Pistia or Ludwigia.
I agree with Andrew that dissecting the flower, in order to know floral features, would be helpful.
It is most likely a Trapa, the small white flower, the arrangement of leaves .... try to look if there are bodies floating on the petioles, that are typical of this taxa. However, it certainly is NOT a T.natans
I agree with Daniel and Pablo : the photo suggest something different from Trapa .
The absence of typical Trapa fruits is also an important criterion. If it were a Trapa I highly doubt that Daniel can't find any fruit during a year. In N-America Trapa natans is an invasive species and always bears fruits. The dispersal in Trapa is by fruit rather than by fragmentation of the plant .
In attach you can see Trapa natans from Italy: petiole, and leaf venation not correspond to the Daniel's finding.
We need more informations: you have to take at least 3 pictures:structure of the flower, base of the petiole and the underside of the leaf.
Here you can see what do you what have to take pictures::
http://www.eddmaps.org/ipane/ipanespecies/aquatics/Trapa_natans.htm
Best regards, Alberto
Unfortunately I did not observe the open flower. The stems and leaves were very very soft, unlike other natant species at the site (Lemma, Salvinia, Pistia, Eichhornia, Neptunia) and had a waxy texture. I don't know Trapa, but judging from images of the plant out of water it looks like the leaves and stems are much more structurally ridged. I'll send a sample in for DNA analysis to solve this mystery.
Re contrib from C Kalidass, yes it could be T. japonica,, but the distribution would be a possible issue; see
http://www.gbif.org/species/7310420
I agree that it is a Trapa, and not T. natans, or its subspecies T. natans var. bispinosa.
That leaves you with 5 fully-recognised Trapa species (cf. The Plant List) as possibilities, all of which have a Eurasian to Far Eastern distribution, and none of which is common. Entirely possible that one of these may have ended up in Mexico...
Mind you, I just had a look at some Ludwigia sedoides images (not a plant I know personally) and could be!
Dan, to make any sort of scientifically valuable statement for publication, you will need three additional pictures: plant from underneath (petiole floats?, venation), open flower, fruits if possible ... Of course, we'd all like to help, but as we have been saying earlier: more info needed!
I agree with Pablo, Stephano, Albrerto ...The picture suggests me Trapa natans L. Lythraceae.
Christophe
I again disagree with Trapa-group :-). Please, consider also the size of the plant - as visible at the photo with the hand holding the plant, the leaves are approximately of the size of the nail. They are several times smaller than the leaves of Trapa! And as we know, the Dan's plants were fully developed because they had flowers (although the flowers were not open - it is likely that they are cleistogamic, as usuall in many other aquatic plants).
Thank you Kateřina, I think many of us have stressed that for many reasons it is not Trapa.
Maybe this is some species of Plantaginaceae or Linderniaceae, close to Gratiola, Bacopa, or Lindernia.
I agree with others that this it is trapa natans See. nice illustrations at http://luirig.altervista.org/flora/taxa/index1.php?scientific-name=trapa+natans If it had swollen petioles (floats) and dimorphic leaves (frilly ones below water) that will confirm it.
Charles if you scroll back to my earlier post you will see that I provide answers to both of those questions.
"...it does not match any of the species of the genus Trapa for the following reasons:
1) This species did not have inflated petioles (aerenchymatous floats) nor do I remember it having an anchored stem. Although I think Trapa can be free floating at maturity.
2) It was not heterophyllous; it only had one kind of leaf that was aerial/emergent and no submerged leaves. It did have what looked like non-photosynthetic (white) roots at the nodes"
I'll also add that the leaf size is significantly smaller than Trapa spp. (note the picture with my finger) and we know that these are adult plants because they were flowering as Kateřina noted.
Trapa is also much more rigid than this species which could not hold the blades up when lifted from the water.
I'm in the process of having a sample DNA tested to see if we can answer this mystery.
Daniel,
Sorry I missed the earlier post ; can't see it in this thread. Thanks for the info, I agree then it is something else.
The center of the plant to me looks characteristicly different compared to Trapa
Have you identified your plant yet? If not I saw something the other day that looked so much like this plant I was shocked. Take a look at:
Water Starwort (Callitriche heterophylla)
Good luck!
Dear all,
Callitriche heterophylla is no possibiliy because of the entire leaf margin. However, as I suggested earlier, Plantaginaceae is one of my candidates and so Callitriche is not too far. At the end, I suppose to have found the solution. At least it seems to be very close:
Bacopa egensis (Syn. Hydranthelium egense), an annual mat-forming aquatic herb. Please, compare the following herbarium specimens:
http://sonneratphoto.mnhn.fr/2012/02/24/2/P03558483.jpg
http://sonneratphoto.mnhn.fr/2012/02/09/1/P03436340.jpg
A description is included in the draft treatment for Flora Mesoamericana and can be downloaded from Tropicos: http://www.tropicos.org/Name/29204614?projectid=3
This maybe is a new country record for Mexico, but the species was described from Brazil and is recorded from Honduras, Nicaragua, and Louisiana/USA.
excellent Franz!! But the plant described in the Flora Mesoamericana is apparently not the same as the one described originally by Poeppig. Please have a look at plate 287 in Botanicus: http://www.botanicus.org/item/31753000658309 The flowers have 4 sepals, 3 petals and 3 stamens. Very strange combination!
Hello Maria! Yes, you are right. The plant described in the Flora Mesoamericana treatment has 5 sepals, 5 corolla lobes and 4 stamens, which is more in line with the general conditions in Plantaginaceae. However, maybe it is nevertheless the same species as that of Poeppig. Poeppig could not have had the full information on variation of the species in its total distribution range. Maybe he was unlucky and has got untypical plants. However, I suppose the flowers of this aquatic plant must be very delicate. On page 76, Poeppig writes that he has received this plant as a herbarium specimen "inter Calceolarias". Most likely the dried flowers were difficult to dissect. Of course he has rehydrated them before dissecting, but some parts maybe easily can get lost with delicate flowers.
I am a bit more concerned about the pink flower buds of the plant found by Daniel and the descriptions telling unanimously that the flowers are white. But maybe, also in our plant the inside of the petals is white. Possibly, Daniel already knows better.
Anyway, I suggest that Daniel contacts the author of the Flora Mesoamericana treatment, i.e. Maarten M. J. Christenhusz whose e-mail adress can be found here: http://www.tropicos.org/Person/54244?projectid=3
A specialist should confirm the still tentative identification. And if it should really be a new country record for Mexico, there should be a publication in some adequate journal and of course an update of the range description in the Flora Mesoamericana draft.
I see that Maarten Christenhusz has a researchgate profile:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maarten_Christenhusz
Meanwhile I have checked the descriptions of Bacopa egensis in Flora de Nicaragua (http://www.tropicos.org/name/29204614?projectid=7 ), Flora Costaricensis (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2646477 ), Flora of West Tropical Africa (FWTA), and a paper by Depoe (1969) on its occurrence in Louisiana. Except FWTA, all repeat the numbers of Poeppig's description: 4 sepals, 3 petals and 3 stamens. In FWTA the plant is described as having "sepals and corolla-lobes 3-5, stamens 3-4". Moreover, FWTA describes the flowers as white or bluish. (OK, pink flowers often change to bluish when dried.) Not sure, (1) either the species is very variable or (2) most authors only have repeated Poeppig's description or (3) there exists more than one single taxon. Seems to get interesting.
Have to add a link to the paper of Depoe (1969):
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/10007851
Thanks very much for your comments! We also found out about the occurrence in Central America and the US, and the surprising report for Tropical West Africa. I have also written to Maarten already. The problem with Bacopa is that most descriptions do not fit with the flower morphology of the species (e.g., Fischer´s treatment in Kubitzki´s Families and Genera of Vascular Plants ) and generic keys also will hardly lead you to Bacopa. It might be better to reinstate Hydranthelium Kunth until it is proven that this genus is part of Bacopa.
Congratulations, Franz! Those Paris herbarium sheets look quite convincing in respect to habit. Dan's pix didn't provide enough information regarding the flowers, though, so I guess we were all just poking around in that respect. I wonder what Don Les has got to say about this now! From what I understand, they were working on this together and will eventually be filling us in !?
Looks like a Bacopa in the Sect. Chaetodiscus. Without the petals expanded, it may be hard to guess the actual species. Possibly, B. lanigera, marginata or serpyllifolia of Brazil.
If it was found in the US, Louisiana or Arkansas, it may be B. egensis (Brazillian water hyssop).
Long story short, I went back recently and collected more specimens. This time I observed the flower open and it does appear to be Bacopa egensis. It had 3 petals that were white and the 3 anthers were blue/purple. Good call Franz! This might be a first report for Mexico. I have looked at Kew specimens labeled as B. egensis and some have rounded lamina, which dot not fit my plant (from Columbia http://apps.kew.org/herbcat/getImage.do?imageBarcode=K001139032 and Ecuador http://apps.kew.org/herbcat/getImage.do?imageBarcode=K001139031). Mine does fit the description and illustrations of Depoe (1969). I wonder if there are several species currently clustered together as B. egensis.
Hi, i found this plant in a lake in Barrancabermeja, Colombia. im trying to identify what kind of specie could be, i think it's the same B. genesis.
¿can you help me?
Yes that is Bacopa egensis. Very nice. Would you be willing to send a sample for genetics?
Daniel Gonzalez-Socoloske sorry, i can´t find it again and i don't saved samples :/
For those still interested here is the publication resulting from this question 6 years ago! Article New record of Bacopa egensis (Plantaginaceae) for the flora of Mexico
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Agricultural Science
- Agronomy