Visnea

Visnea L.f. is a monotypic genus of plant in family Pentaphylacaceae.[1] The genus only contains the following species (but this info may be incomplete); Visnea mocanera L.f. which is native to the Canary Islands and Madeira.[2]

Visnea
Visnea mocanera
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
Clade: Tracheophytes
Clade: Angiosperms
Clade: Eudicots
Clade: Asterids
Order: Ericales
Family: Pentaphylacaceae
Genus: Visnea
L.f.

The genus name of Visnea is in honour of Gérard de Visme (c. 1725 – c. 1797), a French and English merchant in Lisbon, Portugal.[3] The Latin specific epithet of mocanera refers to another genus of plants from India and Malesia, (which is now a synonym of Dipterocarpus C.F.Gaertn. The genus was first described and published in Suppl. Pl. on page 36 in 1782.[2]

The fruits of the tree (known as Mocan) are edible.[4][5]

Note; Visnea Steud. ex Endl. is a synonym of Barbacenia, a genus in a different family.[6]

Fossil record

Four fossil seeds of a Visnea sp. have been described from middle Miocene strata of the Fasterholt area near Silkeborg in Central Jutland, Denmark.[7]

References
  1. Stevens, P.F., Angiosperm Phylogeny Website, retrieved 2014-09-18
  2. "Visnea L.f. | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science". Plants of the World Online. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  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. Retrieved 1 January 2021.
  4. Hernández-Pérez, Margarita; Frı́as, Juana; Rabana, Rosa; Vidal-Valverde, Concepción (September 1994). "Proximate Composition of "Mocan" (Visnea mocanera L.f.): A Fruit Consumed by Canary Natives Author links open overlay panell". Journal of Food Composition and Analysis. 7 (3): 203–207.
  5. Marcelino J. del Arco Aguilar and Octavio Rodríguez Delgado Vegetation of the Canary Islands (2018 ), p. 321, at Google Books
  6. "Barbacenia", World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, retrieved 2018-02-10
  7. Angiosperm Fruits and Seeds from the Middle Miocene of Jutland (Denmark) by Else Marie Friis, The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters 24:3, 1985
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