Otoba (Candolle) Karsten, 1882

Jaramillo-Vivanco, Tatiana S. & Balslev, Henrik, 2020, Revision of Otoba (Myristicaceae), Phytotaxa 441 (2), pp. 143-175 : 144-145

History of Otoba

The name otoba was first used as a specific epithet for Myristica otoba Willdenow (1806 -869), on an herbarium sheet collected by Humboldt and Bonpland in 1801 at Nova Grenade, Mariquita. They did not, however, publish a new species based on it. The word comes from the Greek otobos, meaning a loud noise, possibly referring to the sound produced by the fruits falling to the ground. A formal description of M. otoba was made by Willdenow (1806), who credited it to Humboldt and Bonpland. In the protologue, Willdenow alleged that the specimen was pistillate, and he described a few foliage and fruit characters. Later Humboldt & Bonpland (1809) again described the species, but in this publication the androecium was mistaken for a gynoecium, believing that the three anthers were a tripartite stigma. The type collection has staminate flowers, but a photograph from the Berlin specimen shows fruits. Hence, we suppose that both the above-mentioned publications confused the staminate flowers for pistillate ones and that there may have been another specimen with fruits at B (now destroyed).

Alphonse de Candolle (1855) proposed the section Otoba within Myristica on the basis of its three free anthers, alternate flowers in fascicules and absence of a bracteole on the floral pedicels. The type species for the section was Myristica gordoniifolia Candolle (1855: 30 ; type locality: Peruvia prope Huayaquil, G). In a subsequent publication, De Candolle (1856) maintained this section with M. otoba and M. gordoniifolia and, in addition, cited M. cumara as a synonym of M. otoba , and he created M. otoba var. glaucescens [later Otoba parvifolia (Markgraf) Gentry ] in the “Addenda et corrigenda”. It is important to note that Myristica cumaru (cited also by De Candolle in 1860 as M. cumaru ) is not a valid name because the species was never formally described. It was simply a name mentioned on a specimen. The specimen Pavón s.n. G-DC! Peru, Pueblo Nuevo Perúviae et versus Maynas (fragment; B destroyed, MA!) is not a type specimen.

Bentham & Hooker (1880) maintained Myristica section Otoba , but they included in it the already known sections Iryanthera , which is currently accepted as a genus, and Sychnoneura, now corresponding to Virola Aublet (1775: 904) .

Karsten (1882) accorded the name Otoba generic rank. He mentioned Myristica otoba Willdenow in this genus, without any further comment on the new name Otoba otoba (Willdenow) Karsten. Karsten separated Otoba from Myristica as a new genus because of its larger column (fused filaments).

Later, Kuntze (1891) transferred all species that had been described in Myristica (including the ones transferred to Otoba ) to Palala Kuntze (1891: 566) . Shortly after De Candolle (1893) pointed out that this transfer was illegitimate because Palala is a pre-Linnean name and cannot be accepted.

Warburg (1895) created the genus Dialyanthera , making the new combination Dialyanthera otoba (Willdenow) Warburg (1895: 89) . The same author wrote the most complete treatment of Myristicaceae , the Monographie der Myristicaceen (1897), in which he maintained Dialyanthera with two species, Dialyanthera otoba and D. gordoniifolia . He specified that he circumscribed section Otoba as Dialyanthera to avoid a pleonasm. Between 1922 and 1929 three species were treated under Dialyanthera , D. acuminata Standley (1929: 209) , D. latialata Pittier (1922: 454) and D. parvifolia Markgraf (1926: 924) .

Almost 50 years after publication of the generic name Otoba (Candolle) Karsten, Moldenke (1932) resurrected Otoba and gave O. novogranatensis Moldenke as the new name for Otoba otoba . He also recognized Otoba incolor Karsten (1897: 232) , which was cited by Warburg as a synonym of Virola incolor Karsten ex Warburg (1897: 232) , currently Virola calophylla Warburg (1897: 231) , but never validly published by Karsten.

Smith (1937) in his revision of the American Myristicaceae did not accept the name Otoba and used Dialyanthera , including six species as well as a new one: D. acuminata , D. gordoniifolia , D. latialata , D. lehmannii Smith (1937: 423) , D. otoba and D. parviflora . Moreover, he treated Myristica section Otoba as a synonym of Dialyanthera . Some years later, Smith (1957), described one further species, Dialyanthera gracilipes Smith (1957: 320) .

In Airy Shaw (1973), Dialyanthera is cited as a synonym of Otoba , but no new combinations were made. It was Gentry (1979) who transferred six species of Dialyanthera to the older Otoba and recognized O. novogranatensis as the only species formally established and currently accepted in Otoba .

More than 25 years later, Virola glycycarpa Ducke (1945: 9) was transferred to Otoba by Jaramillo et al. (2000), creating O. glycycarpa (Ducke) Rodrigues & Jaramillo (2001: 446) . Jaramillo & Balslev published O. cyclobasis Jaramillo & Balslev (2001: 563) , and the latest published species is O. vespertilio Santamaría-Aguilar & Jiménez (2019: 371) .

Since 1938, some floras and inventories have mentioned species of Otoba , mainly based on the descriptions of Smith (1937). Few ecological studies of Otoba have been published so far, although some species are frequently mentioned in forest inventories (e.g., Balslev et al. 1987), and Ter Steege et al. (2013) mentioned that the family is hyper-dominant in the Amazon basin.

Schultes & Holmstedt (1971) reported some ethnobotanical uses of Otoba (under the name Dialyanthera ). The phytochemistry and ethnopharmacology of Otoba was described by Gottlieb (1979), Martínez (2000), Ferreira et al. (1989) and De Wilde (2000). Furthermore Van Roosmalen et al. (1996) described the fruits of the two Amazonian species ( O. parvifolia and O. glycycarpa ). Walker & Walker (1983) and De Wilde (2000) described the pollen morphology of the genus. A few additional studies have been published in the last 20 years, mainly Sauquet (2003), Sauquet & Le Thomas (2003), Sauquet et al. (2003, 2017), who studied morphological aspects and phylogenetics of Myristicaceae .