Sinningia brasiliensis

1. Pollination
2. Seedlings
3. Hybridization with S. brasiliensis
4. Rhode Island Rule
5. Feature table
6. External link
7. Publication and etymology

Sinningia brasiliensis has pale yellow flowers speckled with pink and lavender.  On the outside of the tube, the speckles coalesce so that the outside looks more like pink with yellow speckles.

Pollination

It is believed that the flowers are pollinated by bats, but I don't know whether this has actually been observed.  Bat-pollinated flowers in the cactus family, for instance, are very robust (bats are a lot heavier than pollinator birds), while those of S. brasiliensis do not seem sturdier than those of most other sinningias.

In my first version of this page, I wrote that even if my S. brasiliensis bloomed, it wouldn't do it any good, because we don't have pollinator bats around here, as evidenced by the fact that my Cereus peruvianus had bloomed for at least the past ten summers, without ever setting a fruit.  So of course, as soon as that was written, the cactus made fruits.  I don't know whether it had the help of bats or did the solo samba.  At any rate, you can see some pictures.

Seedlings

Young seedlings of this species are quite distinctive, with the dark leaves having a silvery sheen.  As with S. reitzii, the foliage tends to get more ordinary with age.

The Rhode Island Rule

Sinningia brasiliensis is an object lesson for all botanists who name plants.  Don't name a plant after any area larger than Rhode Island!

Sinningia brasiliensis means "the sinningia that grows in Brazil".  Well, duh.  First, Brazil is a very big place, and S. brasiliensis grows only in a little part of it.  But worse, almost every sinningia species is native only to Brazil.  "The sinningia that grows in Brazil" is almost totally useless as a name.

As mitigation, we can point out two things.  The original name was Lietzia brasiliensis, and since there was only one Lietzia species, "the lietzia that grows in Brazil" wasn't ambiguous, even if really really unhelpful.  Also, there is a worse gesneriad name.  China is even bigger than Brazil, and there are lots of chiritas native to China, so "the chirita that grows in China" -- Chirita sinensis -- is an incredibly dumb name.

So: remember the Rhode Island Rule!

Feature table for Sinningia brasiliensis

External Link

See a picture of S. brasiliensis on Ron Myhr's Gesneriad Reference Web.

Publication

Publication: Lietzia brasiliensis, by Regel & Schmidt (1880).  Wiehler and Chautems transferred this species to Sinningia in the first (and only) issue of Gesneriana, 1995 [see references].

In this article, they noted that several crosses had been made with (then) Lietzia brasiliensis.

Hybridization with S. brasiliensis

• Fertile crosses within the Corytholoma clade
  • S. incarnata
  • S. warmingii
  • S. aggregata
• Additional crosses within the Corytholoma clade which had been made, but which had either not flowered or the fertility was unknown
  • S. aghensis
  • S. tubiflora
  • S. carangolensis
• Crosses outside the Corytholoma clade which had been made but had not yet flowered, so fertility could not be measured
  • S. speciosa (Sinningia clade)
  • S. magnifica (Dircaea clade)
  • S. douglasii (Dircaea clade)
  • S. eumorpha (Dircaea clade)
  • S. glazioviana (Dircaea clade)

Hybrid fertility was measured by HPS (hybrid pollen stainability).

Etymology: brasil + -ensis ("resident of").