All species of Prumnopitys, like this P. taxifolia, can be impressively large forest trees [C.J. Earle, 2003.03].
One of the diagnostic features of Prumnopitys is that it bears pollen cones in spikes, seen here on P. andina [C.J. Earle, 2010.06.20].
Typical foliage on a specimen of Prumnopitys montana; iNaturalist observation 29034231 [Diego A. Botero-Álvarez, 2019.07].
Prumnopitys
There are no common names for the genus. The species each have distinct names.
Prumnopitys was established by Philippi in 1861 as a monotypic species with type Prumnopitys andina, which had formerly been assigned to Podocarpus. In 1978 de Laubenfels reassigned 8 Podocarpus and 1 Dacrydium species to Prumnopitys, but then in 1989 Page moved Prumnopitys amara to the new monotypic genus Sundacarpus, and in 2019 Page moved 6 species to the new genus Pectinopitys, leaving only three species in Prumnopitys, which he also assigned to two new subgenera, Prumnopitys and Botryopitys (Doweld) C.N.Page 2019:
Subgenus Prumnopitys:
Subgenus Botryopitys:
Synonymy for the genus (de Laubenfels 1988):
Page (2019) provides no descriptions of the subgenera, but details a variety of lines of evidence, primarily morphological and molecular, for subdividing the genus Prumnopitys as it had been circumscribed by de Laubenfels (1978). Basically it comes down to an idea that the genus contains deep divisions indicative of evolutionary divergences that happened during Mesozoic times, and in the Podocarpaceae (in fact, in all conifers), it is customary to treat such divergent taxa at generic rank (although Pinus and Juniperus provide prominent examples to the contrary). It is fundamentally a subjective argument but is nonetheless valid, when looked at in the historic context of generic divisions within the Podocarpaceae (summarized on the Podocarpaceae page). It remains to be seen whether the subgenera described by Page (2019) win acceptance.
Page (2019) removes 6 species from Prumnopitys and presents a table comparing the morphology of the two genera, which I have used to modify the following genus description authored by de Laubenfels (1988).
Densely branched dioecious trees to 60 m tall. Bark smooth, fibrous, and reddish to yellowish brown, often darker on the surface but weathering to gray, or older trees breaking off in irregular more or less quadrangular plates 3-5 mm thick and 3-10 cm across, with scattered lenticel-like mounds. Foliage buds small and inconspicuous with few, sparse, triangular scales, each with free tips, withering soon after shoot emergence. Leaves variable in arrangement on the shoot, generally facing in the direction of the shoot, loosely or not pectinate, petiolate, slender, straight, linear, bases not or slightly twisted, flexible, margins slightly revolute, gray-green above, greenish gray below, leaves having basal abscission zones. Pollen cones axillary, grouped a on scaly spike with cones spreading perpendicular to the axis of the spike, spikes often clustered on fertile twigs. Seed with its epimatium solitary and subterminal or grouped along a scaly or leafy shoot, sessile, inverted, ripening from green to purplish black; the seed with a slightly asymmetrical ridge at the micropylar end (de Laubenfels 1988, Page 2019).
Argentina; Chile; Colombia; Ecuador; New Zealand; Peru; and Venezuela (Farjon 1998). In other words, this is another taxon (there are a number of them in the Podocarpaceae: Lepidothamnus, Pectinopitys, Podocarpus, and Retrophyllum) where the genus has representatives on both east and west sides of the Pacific Ocean. It thus predates the breakup of Gondwana, which happened in late Cretaceous time when South America separated from Antarctica.
The largest and oldest is probably Prumnopitys taxifolia, but I have found few data except on the New Zealand species. The oldest is 1,358 years for a ring-counted sample of P. taxifolia. It is likely that older trees are out there, but due to severe circuit uniformity problems in this species, cross-sections are needed to achieve any accuracy in age determinations using tree rings.
There have been seven studies exploring the use of Prumnopitys in dendrochronology, including exploratory analyses and a couple of geological dating studies. In general, the genus suffers from poor circuit uniformity with common false and/or missing rings.
See the species accounts.
Plants of this genus (but, possibly Pectinopitys) have been found in early Miocene (about 20 million years ago) sediments in southern New Zealand (Pole 2007).
Laubenfels, David J. de. 1978. The genus Prumnopitys (Podocarpaceae) in Malaya. Blumea 24: 189–90.
Page, C. N. 1988. New and maintained genera in the conifer families Podocarpaceae and Pinaceae. Notes of the Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh 45(2):377-395.
Page, Christopher N. 2019. New and Maintained Genera in the Taxonomic Alliance of Prumnopitys s.l. (Podocarpaceae), and Circumscription of a New Genus: Pectinopitys. New Zealand Journal of Botany 57(3):137–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/0028825X.2019.1625933.
Philippi, R. A. 1860. Zwei neue Gattungen der Taxineen aus Chile. Linnea 30: 730-735 (p. 731). Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2023.02.25.
Last Modified 2023-02-28
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