Salpinganthium hispaniolanum grew within the forests of Hispaniola throughout the mid-Tertiary, between 20 and 30 million years in the past.
Salpinganthium hispaniolanum. Image credit score: Poinar, Jr. & Chambers, doi: 10.17348/jbrit.v15.i2.1161.
The flowers of Salpinganthium hispaniolanum have been present in a number of lumps of amber recovered from an amber mine within the mountains of the Dominican Republic.
The new species additionally represents a brand new genus and belongs to the pea household Fabaceae.
“The flowers of Salpinganthium hispaniolanum are quite striking with their spreading sepals and petals, along with the 10 extended stamens,” stated Professor George Poinar, Jr., from the Department of Integrative Biology at Oregon State University.
“While now darkened with age, the petals were probably white, yellow or even pink, which are the petal colors of the closely related purpleheart tree, whose strong, durable, purplish wood is prized by artists, ship builders, furniture makers and other crafts people.”
While purpleheart bushes proceed to develop alongside rivers in tropical rain forests in Central and South America, significantly within the Amazon basin, Salpinganthium hispaniolanum bushes have disappeared.
“We can only speculate about why these fossil trees have become extinct,” Professor Poinar stated.
“They could have succumbed to some unique biological and/or physical events, such as the loss of a pollinator, presence of a pathogen or climatic change that ravaged populations throughout their entire range.”
“Finding their flowers in 5 separate items of amber reveals that they have been properly established within the Dominican amber forest. “
Professor Poinar and his colleague, Professor Kenton Chambers from the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University, positioned Salpinganthium hispaniolanum within the resin-producing tribe Detarieae; the tribe’s members have sepals and petals dotted with glands.
“Another member of this tribe, Hymenaea, produced the resin that became the world famous Dominican amber,” Professor Poinar stated.
The discovery is described in a paper printed within the Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas.
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G.O. Poinar, Jr. & K.L. Chambers. 2021. Salpinganthium hispaniolanum gen. et sp. nov. (Fabaceae: Detarieae), a mid-Tertiary flower in Dominican amber. Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas 15 (2): 559-567; doi: 10.17348/jbrit.v15.i2.1161