Autor: Spegazzini
• ETYMOLOGY
Genus honouring Lorenzo Raimundo Parodi, Argentine agricultural engineer and botanist (1895-1966).
• DESCRIPTION
A genus of small globose to shortly columnar, solitary or caespitose plants, with the apex depressed, with ribs defined or divided into tubercles. Spines straight, curved or hooked.
Flowers diurnal, usually self-sterile, funnel-shaped to bell-shaped, appearing near the apex, with a scaly pericarpel and receptacle, having woolly hairs and bristles in axils, yellow, orange or intense red, pollinated by insects, usually hymenoptera (Schlindwein & Wittmann 1995, in Emerson 2007). Fruits rather small, globose to more or less cylindrical, fine, hollow and dry or semi-dry, woolly, basally dehiscent, floral remains persistent. Seeds rather small, tiny in some species, black or brown, matt, spherical, reticulate, sometimes with a large aril. Dispersal of seeds, according to their structure, ensured by ants (myrmecochory), also by rainwater (hydrochory).
• HABITAT
The genus Parodia s.s. grows in very different biotopes, on arid rocky grounds, masses of fallen rocks, from plains up to high mountains, around quebradas (deep valleys), among bushes, in hollows of rocks, including on compact clumps of Abromeitiella, a Bromeliad (P. chrysacanthion), from 1000 m up to 2500 m in altitude. Some species like P. microsperma withstand heavy nocturnal frosts during winter.
• DISTRIBUTION
Argentina (Catamarca, Jujuy, Salta, Santiago del Estero, Tucuman), Bolivia (Cochabamba, Tarija).
Currently 8 proposed species:
– Parodia ayopayana* Cardenas 1951
– Parodia chrysacanthion* (K.Schum.) Backeb. 1935
– Parodia formosa F. Ritter 1964
– Parodia gibbulosoides F.H.Brandt 1971
– Parodia horrida F.H.Brandt 1979
– Parodia microsperma* (F.A.C.Weber) Speg. 1923
– Parodia nivosa Backeb. 1934
– Parodia penicillata Fechser & Steeg 1960
References: "TAXONOMY of the CACTACEAE" - ISBN 978-84-617-3692-8 (Vol. 2)
8 proposed species ? really? someone needs to properly do their homework and/or has been working with heavily contaminated DNA samples … or stop copying stuff from somewhere else.
and horrida and nivosa and penicillata not falling under “all is microsperma” (which is a misnomer anyway)? … seriously?
Dear Sir,
thank you for your comments.
I incidentally saw your message only now as this is not my website.
My work has to be read before taking hasty conclusions: the books Taxonomy of the Cactaceae vol.1-2 are only treating about GENERA. Species and subspecies are given as provisionally accepted and will be treated in vol. 3-4.
In Parodia, many are now found within Bolivicactus.
However, I completely agree with you about the extreme and exaggerated lumping of actual classification.
In fact, 128 genera were accepted in the New Cactus Lexicon, while in my book, with the help of the DNA studies, we have now about 177 genera.
The next volumes on whose I am presently working are dedicated to species and subspecies, and there is much to say!
As I am working taxon after taxon, it takes a very long time to verify the informations we have, adding the missing ones and taking pictures of the seeds to complete the DNA studies which are by now insufficient for Parodia sensu stricto.
Project for vol.3-4 is there:
http://cactus-aventures.com/Taxonomy/TdCVol3-4projectENG.html
and you can get the vol.-1-2 here:
http://cactus-aventures.com/Taxonomy_of_the_Cactaceae_ENG.html
Best regards,
Joëlo Lodé, author of the book, not of this page!