''Schippia concolor'', the mountain pimento or silver pimeto, is a medium-sized

palm Palm most commonly refers to: * Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand * Palm plants, of family Arecaceae ** List of Arecaceae genera * Several other plants known as "palm" Palm or Palms may also refer to: Music * Palm (b ...

species that is native to

Belize Belize (; bzj, Bileez) is a Caribbean and Central American country on the northeastern coast of Central America. It is bordered by Mexico to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the east, and Guatemala to the west and south. It also shares a wa ...

and Guatemala. Named for its discoverer, Australian botanist

William A. Schipp William Augustus Schipp (1891-1967) was an Australian-born explorer and botanist. Active in collecting plants in Northern Australia, New Guinea and Java, he moved to British Honduras (Belize), where he collected from 1929 to 1935. Because of fai ...

, the species is threatened by

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss and habitat reduction) is the process by which a natural habitat becomes incapable of supporting its native species. The organisms that previously inhabited the site are displaced or dead, thereby ...

. It is the sole species in the genus ''Schippia''.

Description

''Schippia concolor'' is a medium-sized, single-stemmed palm with fan-shaped (or palmate) leaves. The stem, which is tall and in diameter, is usually covered by the remains of old, dead leaves (but in areas where fires are frequent the corky bark of the stem may be exposed throughout the length of the stem). Individuals bear six to 15 leaves which consist of a petiole and a roughly circular leaf blade which is about in diameter divided into 30 leaflets. The fruit are white, spherical and up to in diameter.

Taxonomy

''Schippia'' is a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus—it includes only a single species, ''S. concolor''. In the first edition of '' Genera Palmarum'' (1987), Natalie Uhl and

John Dransfield John Dransfield (born 1945) is an honorary research fellow and former head of palm research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, United Kingdom, as well as being an authority on the phylogenetic classification of palms. Dransfield has written or ...

placed the genus ''Schippia'' in the subfamily Coryphoideae, the

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

Corypheae and the

subtribe Subtribe is a taxonomic category ranking which is below the rank of tribe and above genus. The standard suffix for a subtribe is -ina (in animals) or -inae (in plants). The early use of this word is from 19th century. An example of subtribe i ...

Thrinacinae Subsequent

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

analysis showed that the

Old World The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by th ...

and

New World The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. ...

members of the Thrinacinae are not closely related. As a consequence of this, ''Schippia'' and related genera have been placed in their own tribe,

Cryosophileae Cryosophileae is a tribe of palms in the subfamily Coryphoideae. The tribe ranges from southern South America, through Central America, into Mexico and the Caribbean. It includes New World genera formerly included in the tribe Thrinacinae ...

. Within this tribe, ''Schippia'' appears to be most closely related to the genus '' Cryosophila''. The species was discovered by Australian botanist

in 1932 and described by German taxonomist

Max Burret Karl Ewald Maximilian Burret, commonly known as Max Burret (6 June 1883 – 19 September 1964) was a German botanist. Burret was born in Saffig near Andernach in the Prussian Rhine Province. He originally studied law at Lausanne and Munich ...

in 1933. Burret named the genus in honour of Schipp. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

upon which the species (and the genus) was based, was Schipp's collection, assigned the collection number ''S367''. This specimen was destroyed when the Berlin Herbarium was bombed during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

Reproduction and growth

''Schippia concolor'' exhibit the unusual strategy of transferring all stored resources from the seed to the seedling before any shoot growth occurs. In most plants, the seedling remains attached to the seed, gradually using the stored resources for growth, until those resources are exhausted. At that point, the connection withers, detaching the remains of the seed. Eight to nine days after the seed is hydrated, the

cotyledon A cotyledon (; ; ; , gen. (), ) is a significant part of the embryo within the seed of a plant, and is defined as "the embryonic leaf in seed-bearing plants, one or more of which are the first to appear from a germinating seed." The num ...

expands, pushes out of the seed, and grows downward into the soil. About 20 days after germination, the cotyledon reaches a length of about and begins to swell. By the thirtieth day the lower are swollen, and about half the reserves in the seed have been mobilised. At about this point in time, the young root (the radicle) emerges. Sixty days after germination the transfer of reserved from the seed has been completed, but it is only after 80 or 90 days that the young shoot (the

plumule A seedling is a young sporophyte developing out of a plant embryo from a seed. Seedling development starts with germination of the seed. A typical young seedling consists of three main parts: the radicle (embryonic root), the hypocotyl (embr ...

) emerges from the cotyledon.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q140821 Coryphoideae Flora of Belize Flora of Guatemala Monotypic Arecaceae genera Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by Max Burret