Velascoa

Velascoa
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Rosids
Order: Crossosomatales
Family: Crossosomataceae
Genus: Velascoa
Calderón & Rzed.
Species:
V. recondita
Binomial name
Velascoa recondita
Calderón & Rzed.

Velascoa is a monotypic genus of flowering plants belonging to the family Crossosomataceae. It only contains one known species, Velascoa recondita.[1]

It is native to a single location (as far as known at the time of discovery) in Landa de Matamoros Municipality in Querétaro in central Mexico.[2]

The genus name of Velascoa is in honour of José María Velasco Gómez (1840–1912), a Mexican painter, polymath and naturalist.[3] The Latin specific epithet of recondita means 'hidden', and was chosen to allude to being found in truly hidden locations, far from roads and villages, and for its habit of growing hidden in cracks amongst limestone boulders on inaccessible, vertical cliffs. Because of the harsh climate, it took botanists five years, after discovering the plant, to collect flowers and mature fruit of an individual to make a good holotype, so the new species could be properly described.[2] It was first described and published in 1997 in volume 39 of the Acta Botanica Mexicana on page 54, by the Mexican husband-wife team of botanists Graciela Calderon de Rzedowski and Jerzy Rzedowski.[1][2]

  1. ^ a b "Velascoa' Calderón & Rzed. | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science". Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 14 March 2021.
  2. ^ a b c Calderon, Graciela; Rzedowski, Jerzy (1997). "Velascoa (Crossosomataceae), un género nuevo de la Sierra Madre Oriental de México" [Velascoa (Crossosomataceae), a new genus from the Sierra Madre Oriental of Mexico]. Acta Botanica Mexicana (in Spanish). 39 (39): 53–59. doi:10.21829/abm39.1997.776.
  3. ^ Burkhardt, Lotte (2018). Verzeichnis eponymischer Pflanzennamen – Erweiterte Edition [Index of Eponymic Plant Names – Extended Edition] (pdf) (in German). Berlin: Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum, Freie Universität Berlin. doi:10.3372/epolist2018. ISBN 978-3-946292-26-5. S2CID 187926901. Retrieved 1 January 2021.