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Home , Ammannia, Ammannia robusta

THE W ASMANN JOURNAL OF BIOLOGY 43(1-2), 1985, pp. 72-74 THE AMMANN/A () IN WESTERN UNITED STATES AND CANADA

John Thomas Howell

Shirley Graham, who has given scholarly attention to the genus for a number of years, has now published a definitive revision of the five of the genus in the New World (1985, pp. 395-420). The following notes on the two species known in western United States and Canada are based chiefly on Dr. Graham's revision and on the collections she has an­ notated in the California Academy of Sciences (CAS and DS). History. The genus Ammannia was named by Linnaeus in honor of Paul Ammann, a German botanist, who lived from 1634 to 1691 (Fernald, 1950, p. 1046; not Johann Ammann, 1699 to 1741 , as given by several western authors). It is a small genus of about 25 species of aquatic and marsh , widely dispersed in temperate and tropical areas in both Old World and New World. In checking floristic accounts of early day western American explorations and floras, the first printed record I have found of an Ammannia is in the 1871 botanical report of Clarence King's expedition where Sereno Watson reported his 1867 collection from Carson Valley, Nevada, as A. latifolia L. (1871, p. 103). This was followed in 1876 by Brewer et al.'s volume 1 of the Geological Survey Botany ofCalifornia in whichA.latifolia was reported from Cache Creek and "on the Lower Colorado" in California, from Carson Valley, Nevada, and from northern Montana (1876, p. 214). Edward L. Greene (1891, p. 231) reidentified the as A. coccinea Rottboell ("A. latifolia, Bot. Calif. not Linn.") and gave it as " common along the rivers and smaller streams of the interior" of California. In general, this treatment of the genus in western floras was followed for about 60 years (Jepson, 1901, 1936; Abrams, 1904; Tidestrom, 1925; Munz, 1935; Peck, 1941; and various local floras). Kearney and Peebles ( 1942, p. 619) in Flowering Plants and Ferns of Arizona following the worldwide treatment of Koehne (1903) give a key for two species as possibly growing in Arizona, A. auriculata Willdenow and A. coccinea Rottboell. Subsequently some workers accepted these two species (Mason, 1957; Munz and Keck, 1959; Correll and Correll, 1972), but since morphologic distinctions between the two are not always clear, others continued to recognize only a single species (Abrams, 19 51; Robbins, et a!. , 1951 ; Munz, 1974). In 1979, Dr. Graham published the results of her analysis of the complex in which two confusingly similar species, but each with a distinct genetic constitution, were recognized, A. coccinea Rottboell and A. robusta Heer & VOLUME 43, NUMBERS I AND 2 73

Regel. Here one has to be cautious: the character of the sessile, axillary cymes that Kearney and Peebles, eta/., used to distinguish A. coccinea from "A. auriculata" is shown by Dr. Graham to be one of the variable characteristics of A. robusta, while the more or less pedunculate cymes of "A. auriculata" demark A. coccinea. The following notes, taken from Dr. Graham's recent key and descriptions, will serve to distinguish the two species: Rottboell. 3- to 5-flowered, usually pedunculate, the peduncle to 9 mm long; 4 or 5, 2 mm long and about as wide, deep rose-purpie, sometimes with a deeper purple spot at the base; anthers deep yellow; equaling or exceeding the calyx-lobes; n = 33; type from Jamaica. Heer & Regel. Inflorescences 1- to 3- (or 5-) flowered, sessile; petals 4 (or to 8), about 2.5 mm long and 3 mm. wide, pale yellow to yellow; capsule usually enclosed by or equaling the calyx-lobes; n = 17; type from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In general distribution in the western United States and Canada the two species are markedly different, as shown by Dr. Graham's maps (1985). Ammannia coccinea (map 2, p. 408) is found only in California, chiefly in the Central Valley but also localized in coastal middle California, coastal southern California, and along the Colorado River in southeastern Califor­ nia. In contrast, A. robusta (map 4, p. 415) is widely dispersed but sporadic and relatively rare except in California, ranging from south-central British Columbia south to Baja California Sur and eastward to the Rocky Mountains. California collections, annotated by Dr. Graham, are in CAS and DS from the following counties:

Ammannia coccinea Sacramento Valley. - Butte, Glenn, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo. San Joaquin Valley. - Fresno, Kern, Kings, Merced, Tulare. Coast ranges.-Marin, Siskiyou. Sierra Nevada. -Madera, Plumas. Southern California. -Imperial, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Ventura.

Ammannia robusta Sacramento Valley. -Butte, Colusa, Yolo. San Joaquin Valley. - Kern, Tulare (Visalia, Congdon in 1881). Coast Ranges. -Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Napa, San Luis Obispo (Twis­ selmann Lake, Twisselmann 16323, "voucher for meiotic chromosome count, n = 17''). Southern California. -Los Angeles (Hasse in 1889, A. Davidson in 1902), San Diego (S. G. Stokes in 1895), Santa Barbara, Ventura. 74 T HE WASMANN JOURNAL O F BIOLOGY

Literature Cited

Abrams, L. R. 1904. Aora of Los Angeles and v1cinity. Stanford Umvers1ty Press. Stanford University, California. 475 p. --. 1951. lllustrated flora of the Pacific states. Vol. 3. Stanford Uni versity Press, Stanford, California. 866 p. Brewer, W. H., S. Watson, and A. Gray. 1876. Botany. Geolog~cal survey of California. VoL I. Umversity Press, Cambridge, Massachusells. x.>. + 628 p. Correll, D. S., and H. B. Correll. 1972. Aquatic and wetland plants of southwestern United States. Environmental Protection Agency. xv + I, 777 p. Fernald, M. L. 1950. Gray's manual of botany, Eighth Edition. America n 13ook Company, New York. 1,632 p. Graham, S. 1979. The origin of Ammannia x coccinea Rou boell . Taxon, 28: 169-178. --. 1985. A revision of Ammannia (Lythraceae) in the Western Hemisphere. Journal of the Arnold Arboretum, 66:395-420. Greene, E. L. 189 1. Aora Franciscana. Doxey and Company, San Francisco, California. 482 p. Jepson, W. L. 190 I. A flora of western middle California. Enema Publishing Company, Berkeley, California. 625 p. --. 1936. A flora of California. VoL 2. California School Book Depository, San Francisco. California. 684 p. Koehne, E. 1903. Ammannia, pp. 42- 56. In A. Engler, Ed. Das Pflanzenreich. IV. 216 (Heft 17). Leipzig, Germany. Mason, H. L. 1957. A flora of the marshes of California. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California. viii + 878 p. Munz. P. A. 1935. A manual of Southern California botany. Oaremont Colleges Scripps Publishing Fund, Claremont, California. 642 p. --. 1974. A flora of Southern California. Umverslly of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California. 1,086 p. Munz, P. A., and D. D. Kcck . 1959. A California flora. University ofC alifornia Press, 13erkeley and Los Angeles, C'..alifornia. I ,68 1 p. Peck, M. E. 194 1. A manual of the higher plants of Oregon. Bin fords and Mort, Portland, Oregon. 866 p. Robbins, W. W., M. K. Bellue, and W. S. Ball. 1951. Weeds of California. Printing Division, (State Department of Agriculture], Sacramento, California. 547 p. Tidestrom. I. 1925. Aora of Utah and Nevada. Contributions from the United States National Herbarium. VoL 25. Government Printing Office, Washington. 665 p. Watson, S. 1871 . Botany. United States geological explorauon of the fortieth paralleL Gov­ ernment Printing Office, Washington. llii + 525 p.

Department of Botany, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA 94118.