Pictetia

Life-forms

Classification System: APG IV

Superregnum: Eukaryota
Regnum: Plantae
Cladus: Angiosperms
Cladus: Eudicots
Cladus: Core eudicots
Cladus: Rosids
Cladus: Eurosids I
Ordo: Fabales

Familia: Fabaceae
Subfamilia: Faboideae
Tribus: Dalbergieae
Genus: Pictetia
Species: P. marginata – P. mucronata
Name

Pictetia DC.

Pictetia is a genus of about eight species of trees and shrubs in the legume family with spiny stems and (in six of the eight species) spine-tipped leaflets.[4] The genus is endemic to the Greater Antilles,[5] but its closest relatives are in Mesoamerica and Africa.[6]

Description

Species of Pictetia range from erect, single-stemmed trees to multi-stemmed shrubs. They can have smooth or scaly bark. The leaves and branches branch off from the stem in an alternate pattern. The stems are spiny, as are the tips of the leaflets in all species except P. spinosa and P. nipensis. The leaves are pinnately compound with an odd number of leaflets. The leaflets, like the leaves, are arranged in an alternating fashion.[4]

The flowers, which are the typical pea flowers of the Faboideae, are borne in racemes. The flowers either grow singly or in clusters along the raceme. The fruit is a flattened legume with prominent veins running along its length.[4]
Taxonomy

The genus Pictetia was described by Swiss botanist A.P. de Candolle in 1825. De Candolle's concept of the genus included all woody legumes with papilionoid flowers and spine-tipped leaflets which originated in the West Indies. When German botanist Ignatz Urban revised the genus in 1900 he split de Canolle's genus into two series, Racemosa and Fasciculatae.[7] The genus Belairia was described by French botanist Achille Richard in 1845.[4] Urban considered the genus Belairia to be closely related to Pictetia series Fasciculatae.[7] In their 1999 monograph on Pictetia, Angela Beyra and Matt Lavin determined that the four species in the genus Belairia was nested within Pictetia and concluded that the genera were thus synonymous.[8] De Candolle's original description of the genus did not designate a type species. Beyra and Lavin designated P. obcordata the lectotype since it was, in their analysis, the species with the fewest specialised traits.[4]
Evolution

Pictetia is a member of the tribe Dalbergieae. Within that tribe, it was recently assigned to the informal monophyletic Dalbergia clade.[9][10] The trans-Atlantic distribution of Pictetia and other closely related genera led Beyra and Lavin to conclude that Pictetia was likely to be an "early Tertiary vicariant"—in other words, that the ancestors of the genus where already present in its current range before South America and Africa split apart.[11] However, based on nucleotide substitution rates, Pictetia was later estimated to be 7.2 ± 1.2 million years old, while Diphysa and Pictetia shared common ancestry 15.0 ± 2.5 million years ago and Pictetia and Ormocarpum separated by 14.5 ± 2.6 million years.[6] This suggests that the presence of Pictetia in the Caribbean reflects the dispersal of its ancestral species into the region long after the islands became isolated from the mainland.[12] The overall distribution of these genera requires at least one dispersal event across the Atlantic Ocean, given that the genera share common ancestry long after the separation of South America and Africa.[6]
Distribution

Pictetia is restricted to Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the British and U.S. Virgin Islands.[5] P. aculeata, the species with the easternmost distribution, is found in the British and U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico.[13] P. obcordata which is endemic to the island of Hispaniola, is found both in the Dominican Republic and in Haiti.[14] P. sulcata is found both in Hispaniola and Cuba,[15] while the remaining species (P. angustifolia,[16] P. marginata,[17] P. mucronata,[18] P. nipensis[19] and P. spinosa[20]) are Cuban endemics.
Notes

Thulin M, Lavin M (2001). "Phylogeny and Biogeography of the Ormocarpum Group (Fabaceae): A New Genus Zygocarpum from the Horn of Africa Region". Syst Bot. 26 (2): 299–317. JSTOR 2666709.
"ILDIS LegumeWeb entry for Pictetia". International Legume Database & Information Service. Cardiff School of Computer Science & Informatics. Retrieved 7 February 2014.
USDA; ARS; National Genetic Resources Program. "GRIN species records of Pictetia". Germplasm Resources Information Network—(GRIN) [Online Database]. National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, Beltsville, Maryland. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 7 February 2014.
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp.36–38
Francisco-Ortega J, Santiago-Valentín E, Acevedo-Rodríguez P, Pipoly J, Meerow AW, Maunder M (2007). "Seed plant genera endemic to the Caribbean Island biodiversity hotspot: A review and molecular phylogenetic perspective". Bot Rev. 73 (3): 183–234. doi:10.1663/0006-8101(2007)73[183:SPGETT]2.0.CO;2.
Lavin M, Schrire BP, Lewis G, Pennington RT, Delgado-Salinas A, Thulin M, Hughes CE, Beyra Matos A, Wojciechowski MF (2004). "Metacommunity process rather than continental tectonic history better explains geographically structured phylogenies in legumes". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B. 359 (1450): 1509–1522. doi:10.1098/rstb.2004.1536. PMC 1693434. PMID 15519969.
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp.2–3
Beyra & Lavin (1999)
Lavin M, Pennington RT, Klitgaard BB, Sprent JI, de Lima HC, Gasson PE (2001). "The dalbergioid legumes (Fabaceae): delimitation of a pantropical monophyletic clade". Am J Bot. 88 (3): 503–33. doi:10.2307/2657116. JSTOR 2657116. PMID 11250829.
Cardoso D, Pennington RT, de Queiroz LP, Boatwright JS, Van Wyk BE, Wojciechowskie MF, Lavin M (2013). "Reconstructing the deep-branching relationships of the papilionoid legumes". S Afr J Bot. 89: 58–75. doi:10.1016/j.sajb.2013.05.001.
Beyra & Lavin (1999); p. 32-36
Lavin M, Beyra Matos A (2008). "The Impact of Ecology and Biogeography on Legume Diversity, Endemism, and Phylogeny in the Caribbean Region: A New Direction in Historical Biogeography". Bot Rev. 74: 178–196. doi:10.1007/s12229-008-9006-8.
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 42–45
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 40–42
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 45–52
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 60–63
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 52–56
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 56–60
Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 65–67

Beyra & Lavin (1999), pp. 63–65

References
Beyra M, Lavin M (1999). "Monograph of Pictetia (Leguminosae: Papilionoideae) and Review of the Aeschynomeneae". Syst Bot Monogr. 56: 1–93. doi:10.2307/25096650. JSTOR 25096650.