Agarista glaberrima
Agarista glaberrima is a shrub or small tree in the heath family, Ericaceae, recorded from Minas Gerais and Bahia in Brazil.[1] Kew accepts it as a distinct species.[2]
Appearance
Judd's treatment describes plants up to four metres tall. The leaves have long, slender, flexible stalks, and the axes and stalks of the flower clusters are hairless. Small white to greenish flowers have cylindrical petal tubes six to ten millimetres long. The rounded capsules contain numerous small seeds.[3]
The hairless flower-cluster axes help distinguish this species from Agarista eucalyptoides, which has a covering of rust-coloured hairs on those parts.[3][1]
Habitat and range
Judd recorded the species in rocky or sandy cerrado, woodland edges, thickets and hillsides, mainly at elevations of 900–1,500 metres.[3] The 2023 Bahia flora places its Bahia occurrences in rocky upland vegetation within the Cerrado domain.[1]
Older treatments restricted it to Minas Gerais. The Bahia flora added records from Abaíra and Barra da Estiva, supported by herbarium collections made in 1992 and 1980 respectively. Publication of those records in 2023 documents an overlooked part of its range; it does not date the plant's arrival in Bahia.[1]
Kew's range summary still lists Minas Gerais alone. The Bahia records should therefore be considered alongside that narrower database summary.[2][1]
Botanical name
Sleumer originally described the plant in 1959 as Leucothoe eucalyptoides var. glaberrima, a variety rather than a species. Judd published the combination Agarista glaberrima in 1984. The original material was Barreto's collection 8921, made in Serra do Cipó in February 1938.[3][2]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 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, accounts 1.4–1.5. Accessed 9 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Agarista glaberrima (Sleumer) Judd. Plants of the World Online. Accessed 9 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Judd, W. S. Agarista glaberrima. New York Botanical Garden, electronic treatment based on Flora Neotropica Monograph 66 (1995). Accessed 9 October 2026.