Agarista chapadensis
Agarista chapadensis is a shrub or small tree of the heath family, Ericaceae, recorded from the Brazilian states of Bahia and Goiás.[1] Kew recognises it as an accepted species of Agarista.[2]
Appearance
The Bahia flora describes plants about three metres tall. The leaves are leathery and oblong to elliptical, with a dense covering of pale hairs underneath. White, tubular flowers, six to eight millimetres long, grow in loose clusters from the leaf axils. The fruits are small, nearly rounded capsules.[3]
Among Bahia's Agarista, the woolly lower leaf surface is a useful identifying character. The similar A. subrotunda generally has heart-shaped leaf bases; those of A. chapadensis are rounded, wedge-shaped or irregular.[3]
Habitat
The 2023 flora records it in sandy grassland, open rocky cerrado and upland vegetation on quartzite outcrops. Judd's earlier treatment also includes moist woodland beside streams and gives elevations of roughly 1,000–1,600 metres. These records cover more than a single dry-rock habitat.[3][1]
A specimen collected in Goiás in March 1973 describes a flowering shrub on a rocky hillside above a stream. The collector recorded a height of one and a half metres and greenish-white flowers. Those are observations of that collection, not fixed dimensions for every plant.[4]
Name and original material
Luiza Kinoshita-Gouvêa described the species as Leucothoe chapadensis in 1981. Walter Judd transferred it to Agarista in 1984. The type collection is Anderson and colleagues 6502, gathered in Chapada dos Veadeiros in Goiás; NY00748756 is a duplicate of that collection.[1][4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Judd, W. S. Agarista chapadensis. New York Botanical Garden, electronic treatment based on Flora Neotropica Monograph 66 (1995). Accessed 9 October 2026.
- ↑ Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Agarista: accepted species. Plants of the World Online. Accessed 9 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Sampaio, A. A., Romão, G. O., Dórea, M. C. and Oliveira, R. P. (2023). Flora da Bahia: Agarista (Ericaceae). Sitientibus série Ciências Biológicas 23; doi:10.13102/scb9151, pp.2–3. Accessed 9 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 New York Botanical Garden. Specimen NY00748756, W. R. Anderson and colleagues 6502, collected 6 March 1973. Accessed 9 October 2026.