This article was contributed by Scott A. Mori.
In this blog, I introduce the sapucaia tree (Lecythis pisonis), a plant that is easily spotted–if you happen to be in the Amazon or in a tropical botanical garden–by the wailing sound the wind makes as it blows across the open fruits, a phenomenon referred to in the common name of the species. When you hear the wailing, look up and you will see one of the largest fruits found in the plant kingdom—and once you have witnessed it, you will never forget what it is! I have included a slide show with this blog to make it easier to follow the rest of this post.
Just before flowering, the deciduous leaves of this species fall, with the tree remaining leafless for 10 to 15 days. Soon after, new, reddish-colored leaves flush and blooming occurs. If you look carefully into the crown of the tree, you will observe female carpenter bees removing sterile pollen that they feed to their larvae upon return to their nests. The bees land on a platform called the androecial hood and collect sterile or fodder pollen from it, the reward reward that lures them to the flower. As they collect fodder pollen, fertile pollen is placed on their heads and later rubbed onto the stigmas of subsequent flowers visited. But, in order for the fruits to develop, the pollen has to be carried from one tree to another because the sapucaia is mostly self-incompatible. After an ovule has been fertilized, an embryo develops and seeds are formed. On the very night that the fruit opens, it is visited by the greater spear-nosed bat (Phyllostomus hastatus). The bats visit the open fruits in search of the edible fleshy aril surrounding the funicle. When they arrive at their night roosts, they eat the aril or accidentally drop it while in flight away from the sapucaia trees. Other frugivorous bats may also be involved in the seed dispersal of L. pisonis, but this has not yet been observed.
We know so little about the pollination and dispersal of tropical plants that even simple observations such as have been made of the pollination and dispersal of the sapucaia tree contribute to our knowledge of their reproductive biology usually contributes new information about species of the Brazil nut family. For this reason I encourage all those fortunate to see species of this plant family to record all interactions they observe relating to the natural history of this family.
BASED ON:
Mori, S. A. 2013. The sapucaia tree. Plant talk of The New York Botanical Garden. http://www.nybg.org/plant-talk/2013/02/science/the-sapucaia-tree/.
HOW-TO-CITE:
Mori, S. A. 2013 onward. The sapucaia tree. The Brazil nut family (Lecythidaceae). http://lecythidaceae.myspecies.info/content/sapucaia-tree.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:
I am grateful to Michael Rothman for preparing the illustrations.
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