Cibotium
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Cibotium  |
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Family: Dicksoniaceae  Patricia Sendao |
hiipu 'u (young plants without trunks called hiipu 'upu 'u; young shoots called pepe 'e [P. & E.]) Greek kibotion, diminutive of kibotos, a box or casket, in reference to the shape of the indusium. Plants tree ferns, terrestrial, hairy. Caudices massive, erect, occasionally up to several meters tall, or often fallen with erect stems arising from buds, covered with a thick layer of dark fibrous roots, often bearing persistent stipe bases or entire fronds. Fronds to 7 m long, forming radiating crowns at tips of caudices. Stipes long, covered with hair only at base or along entire length, linear aerophores on either side, cross section of stipe revealing many vascular bundles arranged in an omega shape. Blades 2-pinnate-pinnatifid to 3-pinnate proximally in larger fronds, leathery. Pinnae adaxial surfaces dark green and shiny to light green, abaxial surfaces light green or glaucous, with long, arachnoid hairs; minute, punctate hairs; or hairs of intermediate character. Sori marginal, clustered in lower portions of sinuses. Indusia consisting of 2 tongue-shaped valves, thick, leathery, the outer one cartilaginous, continuous with and different in texture from fronds. A genus of about eight species ranging from Assam to China and Papua New Guinea in the Old World to Central America and Mexico in the New World. Represented in Hawai 'i by four endemic species and one described hybrid. Native Hawaiian tree ferns may be distinguished from naturalized Sphaeropteris tree ferns by their hairy stipes; Sphaeropteris has scaly stipes. In the 1990s all ofthe Cibotium species on O'ahu suffered greatly from an infestation of the introduced two-spotted leafhopper (Sophonia rufofascia). There are now many fewer plants on O'ahu, and many of the remaining plants are much diminished in vigor and frond size. Ancient Hawaiians used the pulu, the hairy mat found at the bases of the stipes of Hawaiian tree ferns, for wound dressing and for embalming the dead. The fiddleheads were sometimes cooked and eaten, and the starchy trunk interior was used as a starvation food and to feed pigs. Each year between 1854 and 1884, several hundred thousand pounds of pulu were collected near Kilauea on Hawai 'i Island and shipped to the United States to be used as filler for mattresses and pillows. Fortunately, this depredation ceased when it was discovered that the pulu had a tendency to absorb moisture and tum to dust, and it was subsequently replaced by more durable materials. In the early 1920s the starchy core of the Cibotium caudex was briefly used for the production of laundry and cooking starch. Wild pigs actively destroy the trunks of these tree ferns to obtain this food source. Today, cut and dried trunks of hapu 'u are sold in the nursery trade for use as nursery logs for orchi?s and anthuriums, fences, carved ornamentals, and sometimes as planks on muddy forest trails. Ground-up trunks are used as potting material, and living trunks are sold as landscape plants. The Hawaiians have a saying: He hapu 'u ka 'ai he 'ai make. (If the hapu 'u is the food, it is the food of death.) Although the starchy center of the Cibotium caudex was eaten in times of starvation, preparation and cooking sometimes took more than 3 days, during which time another person may have starved to death (Pukui 1983). Problems Associated with Scientific Names Comments are needed here because of the widespread use of names for some Cibotium species at variance with those used in this book. The following discussion is to clarify and correct the misuse of the names C. hawaiense since 1930 and C. menziesii and C. splendens since 1942; before those times the names were used correctly. In 1930 Nakai and Ogura (in Ogura 1930) described Cibotium hawaiense after collecting tree ferns in the Glenwood area of Hawai 'i Island. Ogura was a plant anatomist and was studying the stems of tree ferns. A careful reading of his paper revealed that he collected three species of Cibotium at that site, but could not find C. glaucum. Cibotium glaucum is by far the most common tree fern in that area. This discrepancy prompted my visit to the Tokyo University Herbarium in Hakusan, where it became clear that Ogura had indeed collected C. glaucum, but mislabeled it "C. chamissoi." Because he believed that he had already collected C. chamissoi (the misidentified C. glaucum), when he later found the real C. chamissoi he felt obligated to describe it as a new species: C. hawaiense. The type specimen of C. hawaiense is in fact indistinguishable from C. chamissoi and therefore the name C hawaiense has been included as a synonym for it. In 1942, Skottsberg, incorrectly perceiving a lack of hairs on the abaxial surface of the probable isotype of C. chamissoi in Berlin, resurrected an old name, Pinonia splendens, and incorrectly called C. chamissoi "C. splendens." At the same time, he incorrectly applied the name C. menziesii to C. chamissoi. This change in usage of the names prompted me to review the literature and examine the type specimens. Study of the type specimen of C. chamissoi at the Komorov Institute in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), as well as the isotype in Berlin, showed that the cobwebby hairs typical of C. chamissoi are indeed present on the abaxial surfaces of the ultimate segments (although sparse because of the age of the fronds) and that the measurements of the ultimate segments of both specimens are typical of C. chamissoi. These hairs are not found on C. menziesii, and the minute, brown dots typical of the abaxial surface of C. menziesii were not present on_ either the Leningrad or Berlin specimens. Also, the measurements of the ultimate segments on these specimens did not correspond with those of C. menziesii. These findings confirmed that the names C. chamissoi and C. menziesii were used correctly before 1942, that the name C. splendens is a synonym for C. chamissoi, and that the name C. menziesii was misapplied to C. chamissoi in literature after l942. KEY TO THE SPECIES OF CIBOTIUM IN HAWAI'I 1. Sterile ultimate segments narrow, 4-5 mm wide; sinuses cut 7/8 or nearly to costae, narrow-angled; abaxial surfaces of segments glabrous or with arachnoid hairs (3). 2(1). Stipes covered with stiff, straight, dark brown (sometimes reddish to pale tan) hairs composed of tubular cells; abaxial surfaces of segments light green to slightly glaucous, with minute, dark, raised dots and no arachnoid hairs; all major islands ....................................... 3. C. menziesii 2. Stipes glabrous except at very base, bases with wooly mats of golden to mustard-colored hairs, composed of alternately flattened cells; abaxial surfaces of segments glaucous, with minute tan raised dots (visible with l0x lens) and short and long tan arachnoid hairs; Kaua'i ........ 4. C. nealiae 3(1 ). Basiscopic basal segments of pinnules with sharp-pointed auricles; abaxial surfaces of segments light blue gray, glaucous, glabrous to covered with white arachnoid hairs; stipes ranging from glabrous except at base to entirely covered with wooly hair, hairs golden to mustard to reddish brown to dusky gray, concolorous or streaked; all major islands .. 2. C. glaucurn 3. Basiscopic basal segments of pinnules without sharp-pointed auricles; abaxial surfaces of segments dull light green, clothed with tan arachnoid hairs (deciduous when older, or on older herbarium sheets); stipes glabrous (young stipes with evanescent tan scurf) except at base, hairs golden to mustard-colored; all major islands except Kaua'i ............. I. C. chamissoi |
