''Dracophyllum menziesii,'' commonly known as pineapple scrub, is a species of

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

endemic to the

South South is one of the cardinal directions or Points of the compass, compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Pro ...

and Stewart Islands of New Zealand. In the heath family

Ericaceae The Ericaceae are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with c.4250 known species spread across 124 genera, making it th ...

, it inhabits mountain slopes and cliffs from sea level up to and reaches a height of .' A 2017 assessment using the ''New Zealand Threat Classification System'' classified it as "Not Threatened", giving it an estimated population upwards of 100,000.''''

Description

''Dracophyllum menziesii'' is a shrub between tall. The bark on older sections is a grey colour; newer growth is a brown. It is generally smooth, though may occasionally be fragmented at the base of the plant. The leaves of ''D. menziesii'' are concentrated at the ends of branches, similar to species in the family

Bromeliaceae The Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads) are a family of monocot Monocotyledons (), commonly referred to as monocots, (Lilianae ''sensu'' Chase & Reveal) are grass and grass-like flowering plants (angiosperms), the seeds of which typically contain o ...

'','' and are attached to the stem by 1–2 by 1.7–2 cm light brown leathery sheaths (base of leaf). They are ridged, taper to a point and have edges that are membrane-like and smooth. The rest of the leaf is also leathery, in size, and is triangle-shaped. Its surfaces are hairless and have deep grooves or ridges; the edges resemble

cartilage Cartilage is a resilient and smooth type of connective tissue. In tetrapods, it covers and protects the ends of long bones at the joints as articular cartilage, and is a structural component of many body parts including the rib cage, the neck an ...

and have 20–32 teeth every cm. Its leaf apices are thickened and come to a distinct point. File:Dracophyllum menziesii inflorescence.jpg, The

inflorescence An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of seed plants where flowers are formed o ...

File:Dracophyllum menziesii clump.jpg, A large clump of ''D. menziesii''

Taxonomy

''Dracophyllum menziesii'' was first described by the British botanist

Joseph Dalton Hooker Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century. He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend. For twenty years he served as director of t ...

in 1853, in the second volume of his '' The Botany of The Antarctic Voyage,'' titled "''Flora Novae Zelandiae''", (The Flora of New Zealand). He noted how it may have been the plant which

Achille Richard Achille Richard was a French botanist, botanical illustrator and physician (27 April 1794 in Paris – 5 October 1852). Biography Achille was the son of the botanist Louis-Claude Marie Richard (1754–1821). He was a pharmacist in the Frenc ...

had described from

Georg Forster Johann George Adam Forster, also known as Georg Forster (, 27 November 1754 – 10 January 1794), was a German naturalist, ethnologist, travel writer, journalist and revolutionary. At an early age, he accompanied his father, Johann Reinhold F ...

's drawing of a "'' D. longifolium''," but it differs significantly from Forster's drawings. Since Hooker did not provide a

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 several ...

in his book, the type specimen is a

lectotype In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes the ...

, which the New Zealand botanist Walter Oliver designated in a later 1952 article. It was collected in the

Dusky Sound Tamatea / Dusky Sound is a fiord on the southwest corner of New Zealand, in Fiordland National Park. Geography One of the most complex of the many fiords on this coast, it is also the largest at 40 kilometres in length and eight kilometre ...

in 1791 by

Archibald Menzies Archibald Menzies ( ; 15 March 1754 – 15 February 1842) was a Scottish surgeon, botanist and naturalist. He spent many years at sea, serving with the Royal Navy, private merchants, and the Vancouver Expedition. He was the first recorded Euro ...

Etymology

The

etymology Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...

of ''

Dracophyllum ''Dracophyllum'' is a genus of plants belonging to the family Ericaceae, formerly Epacridaceae. There are 61 species in the genus, mostly shrubs, but also cushion plants and trees, found in New Zealand, Australia, Lord Howe Island and New Caledon ...

'' is from the genus' similarity to species in the genus ''Dracaena'' of the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; es, Canarias, ), also known informally as the Canaries, are a Spanish autonomous community and archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, in Macaronesia. At their closest point to the African mainland, they are west of Morocc ...

, and stems from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

for "dragon-leaf". The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''menziesii'' is after the Scottish surgeon and naturalist

. It is commonly called pineapple scrub.

Phylogeny

In 1928, Oliver published his first attempt to establish

subgenera In biology, a subgenus (plural: subgenera) is a taxonomic rank directly below genus. In the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, a subgeneric name can be used independently or included in a species name, in parentheses, placed between t ...

for ''Dracophyllum'' and placed ''D. menziesii'' in the subgenus ''Dracophyllum'' (then called ''Eudracophyllum'') in the group of ''D. menziesii'', together with '' D. fiordense'' and '' D. townsonii''; this placement was unchanged in his 1952 supplement. What set it apart, he described, was its "low shrubby habit, crowded short and broad leaves, and rather large panicles borne on short branches below the leaves." In 2010, several botanists published an article on the genus ''Dracophyllum'' in ''

Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden The ''Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden'' is a long-established major peer-reviewed journal of botany, established in 1914 by the Missouri Botanical Garden, under the directorship of botanist and phycologist, George Thomas Moore, and still p ...

''. In it, they performed a

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

analysis and produced a

phylogenetic tree A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...

of the tribe Richeeae and other species using genetic sequencing established through the combination of

rbcL Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase, commonly known by the abbreviations RuBisCo, rubisco, RuBPCase, or RuBPco, is an enzyme () involved in the first major step of carbon fixation, a process by which atmospheric carbon dioxide is con ...

and matK bases. They found that only ''Dracophyllum'' subg. ''Oreothamnus'' and the tribe Richeeae were

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

. The

paraphyly In taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In co ...

of the genus ''Dracophyllum'', as well as the

polyphyly A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of converg ...

of the closely related genus ''

Richea ''Richea'' is a genus of 11 species of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae. Nine of the species are endemic to Tasmania and the other two are endemic to the south-east of the Australian mainland. Species include: *'' Richea acerosa'' (Lin ...

'', they argued, suggested that a major taxonomic revision was required. The botanist Stephanus Venter revised the genus in 2021, merging the genus ''Richea'' into two subgenera named ''Dracophyllum'' subg. ''Cystanthe'' and ''D.'' subg. ''Dracophylloides''. Because the 2010 study was based on

plastid The plastid (Greek: πλαστός; plastós: formed, molded – plural plastids) is a membrane-bound organelle found in the Cell (biology), cells of plants, algae, and some other eukaryotic organisms. They are considered to be intracellular endosy ...

sequence data and did not attain some species with strong enough evidence, he instead based the subgenera on morphological characteristics. ''D. menziesii'' is kept in the subgenus ''Dracophyllum'' under his assessment. ''Dracophyllum menziesii'' was found to be related most closely with ''D. fiordense'', and is nested within a larger group (

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

) that share a common ancestor; this includes ''D. traversii'', ''D. townsonii'' and '' D. latifolium''. Its placement can be summarised in the

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ...

at right.

References

Citations

Sources

* * * * *

External links

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q15376947 menziesii Endemic flora of New Zealand