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Montinia caryophyllacea

For the benefit of anyone who might have been interested in the outcome of
my query regarding Montinia caryophyllacea, I'm reproducing below what a
couple of helpful people were able to turn up (apologies to those who have
already seen this information).

MarySue Ittner wrote:

>I have quite a few books on South African plants since I am always
>trying to figure out what to order from the seed list as I have joined the
>Botanical Society there and my husband keeps buying me books.
>        In the West Coast South African Wild Flower guide it says "erect
>shrub with alternate, leathery, blue-green leaves.  Sexes on separate
>plants.  Flowers with four or five white petals. Fruits dry, woody capsules
>with winged, papery seeds.  Flowering July to October.  On clay or sandy
>soils from Angola to the Eastern Cape."  The picture makes it look attractive.
>        In another book it repeats some of the same except to add to 6 ft.
>and female flowers mostly June -Oct., male continuing later.  The picture
>makes it look very erect and not broad, but it is a painting so who knows.
>        It is in still another book and again looks very erect with long
>stem and few leaves and the flowers in clustes on the end of the branches.
>This book places it in the Saxifragaceae family.
>        None of them tell how you grow it, but I hope this will help you a
>little.  None of them also give a clue about how hardy it is.

In a more technical vein, Denise Tousignant offered the following:

This is my first posting as I am new to this list, but your Montinia
challenge was too tempting, so I gave it a try.  Since there didn't seem to
be much about Montinia caryophyllacea in the horticulture litterature, I
snooped a little bit in my Biology references.  Here's what I found:

There is some basic (yet scarce) botanical information about the
Montiniaceae family (including Montinia) at the "Family of flowering
plants" Web site (text only):

http://muse.bio.cornell.edu/delta/angio/www/montinia.htm

The Montiniaceae is a small family comprising only 4 species of small trees
and shrubs. Montinia and Grevea are the only two genuses of the family.
They are both native to paleotropical regions (southwest and tropical East
Africa + Madagascar). They are dioecious (i.e. with separate male and
female plants). One of the closest related families appears to be the
Gooseberry family (Grossulariaceae).  Some plant taxonomists include the
Montiniaceae within the Grossulariaceae. However, the Montiniaceae produce
non-fleshy capsules as fruit, while the Gooseberry family produces fleshy
berries.

I also found a mention of Montinia caryophyllacea in "A checklist of plants
reputed to be toxic", but without any details about which part of the plant
may be of concern.

( http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~djw/plantnam.txt ).

Unfortunately, I didn't find any pictures relating to the Montinia plant.
The WWW is ironic, though.  It seems that molecular biologists have paid
more attention to it than horticulturists.  In my search, I found the
complete DNA sequence of Montinia caryophyllacea's chloroplasts!

(For those who may be curious, the URL is
http://www.dna.affrc.go.jp:10081/nakamura-bin/showcodon.cgi?species=Chloropl
ast+Montinia+caryophyllacea+[gbpln] )

I hope this helps.  Good luck growing your plants!  Maybe you'll be able to
show us a pictures someday.


Thanks to both of the authors for your help with this.

Phil Stevens


------------------------------------------------------------------
Philip Stevens
Assistant Director
Center for Cultural Studies
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA  95064
(408)459-3436
(408)459-4979 (fax)
pstevens@cats.ucsc.edu
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