''Deamia'' is a genus of
cacti
A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Greek ...
. Its species are native from south
Mexico through
Central America to
Nicaragua. Its species have been placed in ''
Selenicereus'' and ''
Strophocactus
''Strophocactus'' is a genus of cacti in the subfamily Cactoideae. Its status and circumscription remain somewhat uncertain, with the genus containing one to three species (not always the same ones). Molecular phylogenetic data suggest that it co ...
''.
Description
Species of ''Deamia'' are climbing or pendent shrubs. Their flowers have hairs and spines and are followed by red fruit with clear pulp.
[
]
Taxonomy
The genus was erected by Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose in 1920,[ with the single species '']Deamia testudo
''Deamia testudo'' is a species of flowering plant in the family Cactaceae, native from southern Mexico through Central America to Nicaragua. It was first described in 1838. It is a climber or clamberer, with long stems and large white flo ...
''. The name honours Charles C. Deam, a plant collector who sent the plant to Britton and Rose.[ It was treated as a distinct monotypic genus until 1965, when ]Franz Buxbaum
Franz Buxbaum (25 February 1900, Liebenau, Graz – 7 February 1979) was an Austrian botanist, specialising in cacti. ''Neobuxbaumia
''Cephalocereus'' is a genus of slow-growing, columnar-shaped, blue-green cactus, cacti. The genus is native t ...
merged it into ''Selenicereus''. Alexander Doweld
Alexander is a male given name. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history.
Variants listed here are Aleksandar, Al ...
revived the genus in 2002, adding the species then treated as ''Selenicereus chontalensis''.[ ]Molecular phylogenetic
Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...
studies in 2017 (based on the two species then known) and in 2018 (three species) confirmed the monophyly of the genus.[ It was placed in the tribe Echinocereeae, subtribe Pachycereinae.][ It was one of the early diverging members of the tribe in the cladograms obtained in the 2018 study, with the species related as follows:][
]
Species
Two species were accepted in a 2017 study of the tribe Hylocereeae which revived the genus ''Deamia''.[ A third species was described in 2018.][
, ]Plants of the World Online
Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It was launched in March 2017 with the ultimate aim being "to enable users to access information on all the world's known seed-bearing plants by ...
still placed ''D. chontalensis'' in the genus ''Selenicereus''.[
]
References
{{taxonbar, from1=Q30339211
Echinocereeae
Cactoideae genera