A Citation

 

Ceropegia bulbosa, with edible leaves and tubers

much sought after in India. My photo from September.

I was looking up some descriptions of new species of Ceropegia on Friday night. I found one on Researchgate from 2015 for a species called Ceropegia terebriformis. The specific name terebriformis means "drill shaped" and refers to the tightly spiralled top of the corolla looking like a modern drill bit. It was only found once. The living plants they had collected grew very well for a while but all died. No uses were recorded.

The origin of the name Caralluma

Stapelia adscendens, from Plants of the Coast of Coromandel ¹ 

Picture file from the BHL Pro Flickr albums.

What is the origin of the name of the genus Caralluma? In short, we don't know. That will not stop me writing about it.

First, I will quote from Wikipedia. I wrote this part of the entry, so I think that it is allowable.

In 1795 William Roxburgh published the name Stapelia adscendens for a plant found in India. He commented that the name for the plant in the Telugu language was Car-allum and that the succulent branches are edible raw, though bitter and salty.¹ The name Caralluma was coined by Robert Brown for a new genus in an article published in 1811. At the time he only described one species in the genus, the plant that he renamed Caralluma adscendens.²

In 1996 Helmut Genaust published the suggestion that it was sensible to conclude that the generic name is derived from the Arabic phrase qahr al-luhum, meaning "wound in the flesh" or "abscess," referring to the floral odour. Genaust was unaware that the genus Caralluma existed east of Palestine. He specifically ruled out its existence in India, where it was first described and named. Genaust presumed that the name would have first been applied to Caralluma europaea in North Africa.³

So, it is clear that the name is from the Telugu language from southern India, but what does it mean? Neither Roxburgh nor Brown seem to have recorded that and did not give the spelling in Telugu script.

The origin of the name Ceropegia

Linnaeus named⁹ the genus Ceropegia in 1737 in his Genera plantarum.  Linnaeus referred to the description and picture of a plant in the Horti Malabarici as the plant for which the genus was created. In 1753 he named this as Ceropegia candelabrum.

Downloaded¹³ from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Open in a new tab to enlarge.

Above we have the iconotype of the Indian plant that Linnaeus named as Ceropegia candelabrum in 1753, as depicted¹³ in the Horti Malabarici of Henricum Rhede (or Reede) tot Drakestein published in 1689. The candelabrum bit gives it away when you see the way the flowers are arranged. Of course, some of you born after the invention of electric light may not have seen any candelabra or chandeliers.

There have been two possible explanations of the origin of the word Ceropegia. Linnaeus never explained it, as far as I know. 

Little fluffy flowers

I received this Hoya carnosa from Italy last September as a stunted succulent with a little bundle of roots that fitted with plenty of room to spare in a 7.5 cm (3 inch) pot. A bargain for €3. It has obviously appreciated being watered and fed a lot more with high humidity and a constant temperature of 23-26°C. It now has one metre of vine with several branches. These first flowers opened yesterday.

New Duck

I found a much larger original photograph of the Star Carr pendant. I decided that I wanted to make a new version of the coloured one I made in 2018 to show why I think this piece of jewelry from 11,000 years ago represents a duck. So I spent this evening colouring and modifying it to make the 19 megapixel image previewed above. I don't know why most of the images of this pendant have it upside-down.

It really is worth right-clicking on the image and opening in a new tab to get the full image. I like that it is a bit glossier, like a real duck.