Costus pitalito

In May 2018 my friends Carla Black and Bruce Dunstan were traveling in Colombia and spotted this unique looking Costus along the road between Mocoa and Pitalito. I sent their photos to Paul Maas and he agreed that this looked like a new species with it's white flower like C. leucanthus, but with bracts like C. guanaiensis and very strange looking cupped ligules. I sent him details of the locality and he said they would look for it during their upcoming trip to Colombia. In July 2018 the Maas' with Chelsea Specht and Eugenio Valderrama traveled along the same road and spotted it, made a collection and later drafted a description.

The type specimen for this new species will be Maas 10733, collected at that site, and one other specimen has been identified by Dr. Maas - Fernández-Alongso et. al. 11440 from Villagarzón along the road to Puerto Asis. It is described as being close to Costus leucanthus with its white flowers and long ligule, differing by the obtuse lobes and bracts with densely villose margins.

A partial phylogeny was completed by Eugenio Valderrama and his associates in the Chelsea Specht Lab at Cornell University and was published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science in September 2022. A sample from the Maas collection has been included in the molecular phylogeny where it was found to be in a lineage close to Costus zamoranus and Costus oreophilus.

HORTICULTURAL NOTES:


ACCESSIONS:Click links (if any) to see details of individual collections.

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