A new species of dragon’s blood Croton (Euphorbiaceae) from South America with singular inflorescences

Abstract

Croton amentiformis, a new species of Euphorbiaceae from western South America, is described and illustrated. Morphological evidence and data from leaf anatomy indicate that the new species belongs to the dragon’s blood group (Croton section Cyclostigma). The dense and congested inflorescence is unusual within the genus. This singular dragon’s blood species is dedicated to the Florence Tropical Herbarium (FT) on the occasion of its 100th Anniversary celebrated in 2014.

Keywords:

• Croton
• Crotoneae
• section Cyclostigma
• Ecuador
• Euphorbiaceae
• Peru
• taxonomy

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the herbaria staff for allowing us to examine specimens from their collections. We thank the botanical artist Juan Luis Castillo who kindly provided the line drawing. RR is grateful to Riccardo M. Baldini for the invitation to give a talk about Neotropical Croton during the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Florence Tropical Herbarium (FT) in October 2014. Publication of CSET n. 148.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

ACF is supported by a grant from CAPES foundation through the PDSE programme, process number: 99999.009518/2014-02. We also wish to acknowledge CNPq and FAPEMIG for financial support.