Pinellia tridentata ?

[Roy Herold]

Just to refresh our memories, here is a copy of a post I made to Aroid-L
back in June of 1996:

"Eric Walton was kind enough to send me a copy of the Chinese species list
from the Proceedings of the VI International Aroid Conference held in
Kunming, Yunnan, last summer. There are no less than seven Pinellia:

P. cordata
P. integrifolia
P. pedatisecta
P. peltata
P. polyphylla
P. ternata
P. yaoluopingensis

Eric also sent me an abstract of a paper on Pinellia presented at the
conference by Li Li of the Beijing Vegetable Research Centre. (do they eat
these things???). Mr. Li says there are about 10 species in the world,
primarily China, Japan, and Korea. In China there are 8 species and one
form. In addition to the names above, he also lists P. zhiguiensis and P.
ternata f. angustata, plus P. tenore as a new species. He further proposes
that P. yaoloupingensis, zhiguiensis, and the ternata forms are polyploid.
P. peltata and integrifolia are described as being relatively primitive,
whatever that means (scholarly help is welcome). He does not mention P.
polyphylla; if I include it I come up with 9 species instead of 8.

Note that P. tripartita is absent from both of these lists. Perhaps it is
restricted to Japan."


I'd have to go along with Alan's conjecture that it's a corruption of
tripartita and/or ternata.


--Roy Herold
North Reading, MA