identifier	taxonID	type	CVterm	format	language	title	description	additionalInformationURL	UsageTerms	rights	Owner	contributor	creator	bibliographicCitation
03E887D92E183D7181DE7FD6FE63FA23.text	03E887D92E183D7181DE7FD6FE63FA23.taxon	http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text	http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/SPMInfoItems#GeneralDescription	text/html	en	Cercestis camerunensis (Ntepe-Nyame 1981)	<div><p>CERCESTIS CAMERUNENSIS (NTÉPÉ 1981)</p><p>Colette Ntépé was justifiably proud of her discovery of this magnificent hemi-epiphyte (Figs 2; 3), one of the most spectacular African aroids, and she gave it pride of place as the frontispiece in her Flore du Cameroun volume (Ntépé-Nyamè 1988). For many years C. camerunensis was confused with C. mirabilis, the latter described in the nineteenth century, and until the facts were established through careful field studies, its identity confused and eluded established experts.</p><p>She formally described the species in 1981 as Rhektophyllum camerunense, a genus then regarded as distinct from Cercestis and containing only R. mirabile N.E.Br. However, in her thesis eight years previously, she had already expressed doubt regarding the conspecificity of two juvenile forms she referred to as the hastate-leaved and cordate- or oblong-leaved forms of R. mirabile . These were treated in the herbaria at Yaoundé and elsewhere as variant kinds of foliage belonging to the same plant (Letouzey 1972). In a letter to Marianne Knecht written in July 1978, Colette Ntépé expressed her increasing certainty that she was dealing with two distinct species of Rhektophyllum, mentioning differences in overall and base shape of the leaf blade, female flower colour, and in what became Rhektophyllum camerunense the widely flattened aerial roots and thick stem as well as its much more abundant seed production and germination. The difficulties she faced in coming to a decision, like so many botanists based in the tropics, were well expressed in the same letter: “Je serais effectivement très enchantée d’une collaboration entre nous, car je me bute aux mêmes problèmes que vous: à notre herbier d’ici, il y a pas mal d’espèces, mais les déterminations sont ou mal faites ou ne le sont pas du tout, puisqu’on se base sur le [sic] Flore de Hutchinson [Hepper 1968]; que faut-il faire dans ce cas où l’on se trouve en présence d’une espèce non signalée par l’Herbier ou signalée mais non déterminée et dont on ne trouve pas l’équivalent dans Hutchinson?” [“I would indeed be very pleased to collaborate with you because I have come up against the same problems as you. Our herbarium here has quite a lot of species but the determinations are either unsatisfactory or altogether lacking, since we rely on the Flora of Hutchinson [Hepper 1968]; what should we do when we are faced with a species that isn’t recorded in the herbarium or is recorded but undetermined and for which there is no equivalent species in Hutchinson?”]</p><p>Having commented in her thesis that she had never seen both leaf types on the same plant, she described in 1981 how R. Letouzey carefully disentangled the juvenile stems of C. mirabilis and C. camerunensis in the field and confirmed that the different leaf types occur on different plants. The juvenile terricolous plants of the two species occur very frequently tangled up together and mixed collections are often found in herbaria. It may be significant that in Ntépé’s herbarium collection series, beginning in 1979 (Plateforme des Herbiers 2025), the first two numbers are C. camerunensis and C. mirabilis, suggesting that once focused on the preparation of her Flora treatment, the resolution of this problem was a priority.</p><p>Because of her doubts, she deliberately avoided in her thesis assigning species names in most of her detailed morphological and anatomical observations of Rhektophyllum plants. There she described and illustrated in considerable detail the seed germination and development, seedling growth in habitat into terricolous and hemi-epiphytic forms, progressive division of the leaf, flowering behaviour and root anatomy and morphology; most of this information had never been recorded before and was included in her later publications.Later, Patrick Blanc (1980) published observations on the shoot architecture of Cercestis mirabilis (as Rhektophyllum mirabile) which showed that in this African genus, unlike Neotropical aroid flagellaeproducing taxa (e.g., Monstera Adans., Philodendron Schott), a single shoot consists of euphyll-bearing stages alternating with flagellae bearing only cataphylls.</p><p>In 1981 Ntépé had new characters to distinguish the two species, among which were root morphology and anatomy: in C. camerunensis the feeder roots are broad and flattened with distinct external flanges and have long been used locally as a source of fibres. More recently these have been studied by engineers investigating natural fibres in Cameroon (Béakou et al. 2008, Betene et al. 2019; Kah et al. 2014; Noutegomo et al. 2017, 2019, 2023, 2024). Recent studies of Cercestis in Gabon (Mayo in Mayo et al. 2024) have added two other useful diagnostic leaf characters separating C. camerunensis and C. mirabilis, the presence of lacunar parenchyma in the former, and distinctly denuded basal ribs in the leaves of the latter. Ntépé used the overall leaf base sinus shape as a differentiating character, but the basal rib denudation in C. mirabilis is a reliable extra feature.</p></div>	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03E887D92E183D7181DE7FD6FE63FA23	Public Domain	No known copyright restrictions apply. See Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53 for further explanation.		Plazi	Mayo, Simon J.;Onana, Jean-Michel;Knecht, Marianne	Mayo, Simon J., Onana, Jean-Michel, Knecht, Marianne (2026): Colette Ntépé-Nyamè: pioneer of modern tropical African Araceae taxonomy. Adansonia (3) 48 (7): 43-53, DOI: 10.5252/adansonia2026v48a7
03E887D92E1A3D7181DE7D10FAE9F805.text	03E887D92E1A3D7181DE7D10FAE9F805.taxon	http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Text	http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/SPMInfoItems#GeneralDescription	text/html	en	Culcasia scandens (LETOUZEY & NTEPE 1981)	<div><p>CULCASIA SCANDENS (LETOUZEY &amp; NTÉPÉ 1981)</p><p>The correct identity of Culcasia scandens P. Beauv. has been and remains (Lebrun &amp; Stork 2014) the source of much taxonomic confusion. The central issue turns on the interpretation of the type specimen at the Geneva Herbarium (G) and Palisot de Beauvois’ original illustration. Two papers have been published that addressed the identity of C. scandens, but they reached different conclusions. Hepper (1967) applied the name C. scandens to the species recognised today as C. piperoides A. Chev. and applied the name C. saxatilis A. Chev. to what should correctly be C. scandens . This view was also presented in Hepper’s revision of the Flora of West Tropical Africa (Hepper 1968) and has thus been very influential. Letouzey and Ntépé (1981), on the other hand, noticed that the type collection at the Geneva Herbarium (G) was composed of two distinct elements, and made a careful comparison with the two versions of the original illustration of Palisot de Beauvois (1803, 1805). Their conclusion was that C. saxatilis is a synonym of C. scandens . Their field experience and specialist knowledge were certainly critical in enabling them to confidently interpret Palisot de Beauvois’ original plate as an accurate and informative representation, since it illustrates many of the critical diagnostic characters used today (rootless upper internodes, constricted spathe, spadix distinctly longer than spathe with persistent male axis post-anthesis, laxly arranged female flowers; Lachenaud in Mayo et al. 2024). As Olivier Lachenaud has highlighted, C. scandens is confined to periodically flooded forest along river and lake margins where it may grow as an erect terricolous plant, or develop into a climber wherever a supporting tree is available. It turns out that this species, which has caused so much nomenclatural and taxonomic confusion, is among the easiest to determine, especially when details of its habit and growth form are recorded.</p></div>	https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03E887D92E1A3D7181DE7D10FAE9F805	Public Domain	No known copyright restrictions apply. See Agosti, D., Egloff, W., 2009. Taxonomic information exchange and copyright: the Plazi approach. BMC Research Notes 2009, 2:53 for further explanation.		Plazi	Mayo, Simon J.;Onana, Jean-Michel;Knecht, Marianne	Mayo, Simon J., Onana, Jean-Michel, Knecht, Marianne (2026): Colette Ntépé-Nyamè: pioneer of modern tropical African Araceae taxonomy. Adansonia (3) 48 (7): 43-53, DOI: 10.5252/adansonia2026v48a7
