I have not found any photographs of living plants. Mill (2015) provides excellent line drawings.
I have not found any photographs of living plants. Mill (2015) provides excellent line drawings.
Podocarpus aristulatus
None are known (Mill 2015).
Synonymy:
Lectotype Cuba, prov. Guantánamo, “prope villam Monte Verde dictam”, i-vii 1859, Wright 1461 p.p. (G-BOIS, left-hand branch with male cone and base of removed male cone). See Podocarpus angustifolius for notes on phylogenetic relationships between the Caribbean species of Podocarpus.
Single or multi-stemmed trees to 12(-20) m tall and 30? cm dbh (only one record); first-order branches whorled. Outer bark grayish brown, smooth; inner bark dark brown; wood grayish. Twigs diverging from branch at 40-60°, 50-150 mm long but leaders often longer, green in first year, later grayish brown. Terminal buds globose, 1.8-2.3 × 0.7-1.7 mm. Bud scales 10 or more in at least three series, longer than bud diameter, 1.3-2.1 × 0.3-0.8 mm, the inner ones slightly longer than the outer but all subequal in width, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, greenish brown, keeled; tips erect, acute and ± pungent-apiculate at apex. Leaves on twigs 2-5 mm apart, with decurrent petiole 1.1-2.5 mm long on both adult and juvenile leaves, twisted at base, spreading at 38-56°, often recurved. Leaves purplish or violet during flush, maturing thick and stiffly coriaceous, semi-matte to glossy, dark green to olive-green above and grey-green beneath, mostly linear-elliptic or narrowly elliptic, juvenile and adult leaves similar in size, 27-48 × 3.9-6.7 mm, 5.4-8.7 times as long as broad, mostly straight but occasionally falcate, margins thickened to narrowly revolute; abaxial midrib 0.4-0.7 mm wide, ± prominently raised but indistinctly, inconstantly and only proximally raised above; base attenuate, apex acute or short-acuminate, aristate. Pollen cones 2 or 3 per fertile twig, central or distal, each cone solitary in leaf axil on previous year’s growth, fertile at leaf flushing. Individual cones with a 0.5-1.5 mm pedicel; cone narrowly cylindrical or ellipsoid, 9-17 × 3-4 mm, brownish with purplish bloom and pinkish brown microsporangia, shedding from base to apex. Pollen color cream. Female cones not documented. Male cones and flushing leaves seen from mid-April to mid-June (Mill 2015). Mill (2015) also notes that although Buchholz and Gray (1948) describe the female cones, their description is actually based upon a specimen of P. victorinianus.
This is one of three closely related species of Podocarpus that occur in eastern Cuba, albeit with largely disjunct distributions. P. ekmanii differs in having small leaves, <35 mm long. In P. victorinianus, the lower midrib is not or only indistinctly and proximally raised, and the leaves are usually wider at 6-11 mm wide (Mill 2015).
Cuba, the eastern provinces of Holguín, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantánamo. Occurs on limestone and ultramafic substrates at elevations of 500-2500 m in montane cloud forest, in which it is one of the diagnostic species, dominant or co-dominant with Schefflera tremula. Other associates include Ficus trigonata and Svenhedinia minor. Carabia (1945, cited in Mill 2015) stated that the Sierra de Nipe, where many P. aristulatus collections have been made, has an October to February rainy season with the driest months being March, April and July, and that the area experiences frequent dense fog.
Distribution data for all species native to the Caribbean, based on confirmed specimens cited by Mill (2015), using data from herbarium sheets. Data include both latitude/longitude and narrative location descriptions; coordinate uncertainty generally <5000 m. Podocarpus aristulatus shown in dark red.
The IUCN conflates P. aristulatus with P. angustifolius and P. victoriananus, and assesses the group as "Vulnerable". Mill (2015), who has prepared many of the IUCN conservation assessments for conifers, also assesses the species as "Vulnerable", since it has a much larger extent of occurrence and area of occupancy than either P. angustifolius or P. victorinianus. Mill (2015) does not elaborate, but by this rationale, the IUCN's stated analysis for P. angustifolius must in large part be an assessment of P. aristulatus as defined here. That analysis finds that the major threats to the species' habitat are fire and mining. Open-pit mining for nickel is particularly destructive; Cuba has extensive laterites, derived from ultramafic rocks, from which nickel is mined. Most of the nickel deposits in Cuba occur within the range of this species, so mining has caused ongoing loss of habitat. Other areas, although nominally within reserves, remain under threat from illegal hunting and logging. Still other areas are suffering loss of habitat due to agroforestry (González Torres and Gardner 2013). It is interesting that in New Caledonia, which contains four times the nickel reserves of Cuba, many other conifers are even more severely threatened by nickel mining.
No data as of 2023.01.14.
There are no recorded uses (Mill 2015).
No data as of 2023.01.14.
The epithet is the diminutive of arista, Latin for "awn", referring to the point at the leaf apex.
Buchholz, J. T. and N. E. Gray. 1948. A taxonomic revision of Podocarpus IV. The American species of section Eupodocarpus, Subsections C and D. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum 29:147. Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2023.01.08.
Carabia, J. B. 1945. The vegetation of Sierra de Nipe, Cuba. Ecological Monographs 15:321-341.
González Torres, L.R. and M. Gardner. 2013. Podocarpus angustifolius. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2013: e.T191536A18140999. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2013-1.RLTS.T191536A18140999.en, accessed 2023.01.14.
Mill, R. R. 2015. A monographic revision of the genus Podocarpus (Podocarpaceae): II. The species of the Caribbean bioregion. Edinburgh Journal of Botany 72 (1): 61-185. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960428614000328.
Parlatore, F. 1868. Coniferae (Ordo CXCIX). Vol. 16, part 2, p. 513 in A.P. de Candolle and A. de Candolle. Prodromus systematis naturalis regni vegetabilis. Paris. Available: Real Jardín Botánico Biblioteca Digital, accessed 2023.01.14.
No data as of 2023.01.14.
Last Modified 2023-02-26
Back to top