It’s a mouthful. x Chiranthomontodendron lenzii, the hybrid monkey hand tree, is the end result of an intergeneric cross involving the Mexican monkey hand tree, Chiranthodendron pentadactylon, native to Guatemala and adjacent sections of Mexico, and the flannelbush cultivar Fremontodendron ‘Pacific Sunset’. The latter is alone a cross among F. californicum, indigenous mostly to California, and F. mexicanum, indigenous to northern Baja California and adjacent sections of San Diego County.
As are its mothers and fathers, the hybrid monkey hand tree is ideal regarded for its unique flowers, which exhibit features of both mother and father or intermediate concerning the two. Flowers of all 3 have 5 sepals that seem like petals and a unique arrangement of five stamens joined at the foundation and distribute like the fingers of a elevated hand. Leaves ordinarily are palmate with five lobes resembling people of genus Acer (maple), shiny environmentally friendly and to some degree leathery over, hairy and tawny beige beneath.
But what is the tale powering that awkward name? The very simple respond to is that the Intercontinental Code of Botanical Nomenclature calls for that hybrids involving two genera be specified a name that brings together parts of the names of equally moms and dads. That, of system, is not the entire tale. . .
The cross was correctly created in the early 1980s, just after repeated attempts, by plantsman Austin Griffiths. At the time Griffiths was a university student at Claremont Graduate College, a cooperative undertaking involving Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Yard (now California Botanic Back garden) and Pomona Higher education.
Informally and without the need of scientific documentation, Griffiths named the newly produced hybrid Leelenzia ranchorum, the genus identify honoring Lee W. Lenz, director of the botanic back garden from 1960 to 1983.
Recognised generally for his work with Iris and Yucca, Lenz devoted substantially of his time to breeding and hybridizing California indigenous crops for introduction to horticulture. It can be assumed that his get the job done was the main impetus powering Griffiths’ persistent initiatives to develop the demanding monkey hand/flannelbush cross.
From its inception in the late 1920s and early ‘30s, Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Yard (RSABG) has been centered on the conservation of indigenous crops, with emphasis on analysis and enhancement. The Backyard garden has bred, named, and released quite a few now greatly grown choices and hybrids to the horticultural trade.
The monkey hand hybrid was propagated and launched to the trade by RSABG as x Chiranthofremontia lenzii. It was formally explained and named in 1991 by James Henrickson, a California State College professor who acquired his PhD at the Clarement Graduate University in 1969.
That title persisted till 2009, when Laurence Dorr, analysis botanist and curator of botany at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Pure Historical past, up to date and printed the name of the hybrid as x Chiranthomontodendron lenzii. This identify alter was necessary by an previously title adjust for a person of its dad and mom: the genus Fremontodendron.
The genus Fremontodendron was to begin with named Fremontia in 1853 by John Torrey, American botanist, doctor, and author of a lot of publications on the flora of the United States. A single of these was an 1851 report on vegetation gathered by the controversial botanist/explorer John C. Fremont, who led quite a few expeditions in the early 1840s to map and doc routes to the American west.
In that 1851 report Torrey utilized the identify Fremontia vermicularis to a typical shrub of arid areas, only afterwards exploring that the exact plant had been described and named in 1839 by German botanist Christian Nees von Esenbeck.
The 1853 title Fremontia hence was considered an invalid homonym (identical name for a distinctive plant) and an acknowledged synonym (various title for the exact plant) of the genus Sarcobatus, which currently consists of the species usually known as greasewood (S. vermiculatus and S. baileyi).
This issue was resolved in 1893 when Frederick Coville, chief botanist at the U.S. Division of Agriculture and to start with director of the U.S. Nationwide Arboretum, developed a new genus, Fremontodendron, and put the California flannelbush in just it. The scientific title for this plant these days is Fremontodendron californicum (Torr.) Coville.
There were being multiple subsequent attempts to keep (“conserve”) the 1853 name Fremontia for the California flannelbush gathered by John Fremont, but the Nomenclature Committee of the Worldwide Affiliation of Plant Taxonomists ruled against this in 1954.
The title Fremontia however was used by Philip Munz, botanist and director of the RSABG from 1946 to 1960, in his very regarded Flora of California (1959, 1968). This undoubtedly contributed to its continued use by the horticulture sector and by many experts.
The title fremontia is nevertheless in use as a prevalent title for flannelbush (as is leelenzia for the monkey hand hybrid) and is retained in the nursery trade in the nonetheless popular name of the hybrid monkey hand tree Chiranthofremontia lenzii.
The genus name Chiranthodendron has also undergone variations above the years, although the impacts on horticulture have been less considerably-reaching. The Mexican monkey hand tree was very first described by that title in a 1795 post by Joseph D. Larreategui, a botanist/health practitioner at the Royal Botanical Yard of Mexico.
In 1803 Antonio Cavanilles, director of the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, republished portions of Larreategui’s post in Spain, altering the genus title Chiranthodendron to Chirostemon, apparently at the ask for of Vicente Cervantes, director of the Mexican Royal Botanical Garden. In subsequent publications, republications, and translations in Spanish, French, and German, the plant was variously explained as Cheirostemon platanoides (1806), Cheirostemon apetalus (1806), and Chiranthodendron platanoides (1872).
Currently, as James Henrickson pointed out in his 1991 description and naming of x Chiranthofremontia lenzii, the 1795 title Chiranthodendron pentadactylon Larreat. clearly has precedence. C. platanoides, Cheirostemon platanoides, and Cheirostemon apetalus are considered by some to be synonyms.
Chiranthomontodendron lenzii Dorr. (2009) is recognized, even though not universally utilised, as the proper title for the hybrid monkey hand tree.
What can be figured out from this story is that alterations in plant names are typically debated or challenged by other researchers and they can be disconcerting for the rest of us, but they are rarely arbitrary.
For these wishing to mature the hybrid monkey hand tree or possibly of its mother and father, it should be pointed out that although flannelbush is constantly made available in the trade as Fremontodendron and the Mexican monkey hand tree is generally offered as Chiranthodendron, the hybrid is still commonly regarded as x Chiranthofremontia lenzii, primarily in the nursery trade.
The hybrid and its parents vary in several techniques. Chiranthodendron is a massive tree, to 50 toes tall or additional in cultivation and practically 2 times that in the moist montane forests of Guatemala. Fremontodendron, in most of its kinds and types, is a large shrub, 12-20 toes tall, in cultivation as in the dry chaparral and coniferous woodlands in which it in a natural way grows. The hybrid can turn out to be a big shrub/tree to 30 ft tall and 20 toes huge.
Possibly most critical for gardeners, all 3 plants need to have sunlight, quite gentle winters, and very good drainage. The Mexican plant grows in a natural way on wet but quickly-draining slopes even though the California native prefers a dry summer time together with near-best drainage.
I haven’t grown the Mexican monkey hand tree or the hybrid, but I know from painful experience that Fremontodendron ‘California Glory’ can be rapidly completed in by almost any quantity of direct summer months irrigation, even at the top rated of a sunny, properly-drained slope in summer season-dry northern California.
If you grow or have developed any of these crops come to feel totally free to allow us know. We all acquire from the shared encounters of some others.
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