Ephedra breana

Phil. 1895

Common names

Taxonomic notes

Syn.: Ephedra wraithiana I.M. Johnst.; some authors place it into synonymy with E. americana. Molecular studies, e.g. Rydin and Korall (2009), have placed it into a clade with the other South American taxa of Ephedra, sister to the North American taxa.

Description

Dioecious shrubs. Twigs are 2 mm thick, tubercular-rough. Buds 3 mm long at the tip of new twigs, subtriangular, pointed. Pollen cones sessile, ovate, 6 mm long, borne in pairs; there are three sessile anthers in a common filament, barely emerging from the scales; seed cones sessile and borne in pairs, bifid, with a white border (Philippi 1895).

Martínez Carretero (2018) treats Ephedra americana as synonymous to E. breana, thus the description given there is useful for E. breana as well.

Distribution and Ecology

Argentina and Chile. Found from 500 m elevation to well above timberline, in arid regions with drought periods of 6-10 months. Annual precipitation of less than 300 mm is primarily during winter (Belov 2009).

E. breana can tolerate temperatures as low as -13°C, through the mechanism of supercooling (Squeo et al. 1996).

Remarkable Specimens

No data as of 2023.03.03.

Ethnobotany

Observations

See the observations on iNaturalist, accessed 2021.12.29.

Remarks

The epithet denotes the type locality, Breas, in the Atacama desert of Chile (Philippi 1895). This may correspond to the modern location, Quebrada Las Breas, located at about (-28.122,-70.171); Philippi references a mining engineer, Don Alamiro Larrañaga, who may have collected the type specimen, and Quebrada Las Breas is in a mining district.

Citations

Belov, M. 2009. Description and images of Ephedra breana. http://www.chileflora.com/Florachilena/FloraEnglish/HighResPages/EH0718.htm, accessed 2021.12.29.

Martínez Carretero, Eduardo. 2018. Ephedraceae Dumort. in Flora de Mendoza, Multequina 27: Fascículo 10, FM 1-9. Available: https://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/428/42857911008/42857911008.pdf, accessed 2021.12.26.

Philippi, R. A. 1895. Plantas nuevas chilenas de las familias que corresponden al tomo V de la obra de Gay: (continuacion). Anales de la Universidad de Chile 91:519. Available: DOI: 10.5354/0717-8883.2012.20910, accessed 2021.12.29.

Rydin, C., and P. Korall. 2009. Evolutionary relationships in Ephedra (Gnetales), with implications for seed plant phylogeny. International Journal of Plant Sciences 170(8):1031–1043. doi:10.1086/605116.

Squeo, F. A., F. Rada, C. García, M. Ponce, A. Rojas, and A. Azócar. 1996. Cold resistance mechanisms in high desert Andean plants. Oecologia 105(4):552-555.

See also

Species profile at Plants of the World Online, accessed 2021.12.29.