On World Day of Portuguese Language - May 5, meet Camoensia scandens

Since 2009, May 5 was established as International Portuguese Language Day by the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP), formed by Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Mozambique, Portugal, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Timor-Leste. The date was also declared as World Portuguese Language Day by Unesco in 2019. To celebrate this day, the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden highlights in its collection the Camoensia scandens, an African species with flowers that draw attention for their beauty and delicacy. The genus Camoensia was so named in honor of the Portuguese poet Luís Vaz de Camões (c. 1524 - 1579 or 1580), author, among other works, of The Lusiads, the first poem in the language to receive recognition as a masterpiece of world literature.

According to the curator of the Living Collection of the Botanical Garden, researcher Marcus Nadruz, the genus Camoensia, belonging to the Leguminosae family, is found in Central Africa (Angola, Cabinda, Cameroon, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Zaire) and has only two species, C. scandens being cultivated in the Botanical Garden of the Botanical Garden. The technologist Marcos Gonzalez, also from the Live Collection team of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden, researched the history of the plant, which you can check in the text below:

Camoensia Welw. ex Benth. & Hook.f at JBRJ

By Marcos Gonzalez (JBRJ)

The botanical genus Camoensia was described by the Austrian physician and naturalist Friedrich Welwitsch (1806-1872), from material he collected in Golungo Alto, Angola, during the long expedition (seven years) he coordinated, as a contracted naturalist, to the African territory recently occupied by Portugal (1855).

This period of Portuguese history, marked by the transition from an absolutist monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, is known as Regeneration (1851-1875), as the national intelligentsia was committed to a social 'regeneration' from reforms capable of stimulating the cultural, moral, political, economic, and technological development of the nation (Albuquerque et al., 2020). With that epithet, Camoensia, the Austrian naturalist seems to toast the ufanistic spirit that such an endeavor inspired, paying homage to the iconic writer Luís de Camões (Quattrocchi, 1999, p.418), author of the epic poem Os Lusíadas, in which the heroic Portuguese conquests in the East are narrated. Henry Hamilton Johnston (1883, p.228), an English botanist who also observed the plant in its natural environment, praised the association: 'beautiful and poetic', Camoensia was aptly named.

Although he is best known for his work derived from the expedition in Angola, Welwitsch also contributed significantly to the improvement of horticulture in Portugal. The naturalist was superintendent of the various gardens of the Duke of Palmela and was, at different times until 1853, in charge of the Botanical Gardens of Ajuda, in Lisbon, and of Coimbra (Hiern, 1896). Part of the material he collected in Angola, for example, was sent to the latter, including live propagules of Camoensia, as he himself tells us (Welwitsch, 1859). It bothered him the fact that "most or almost all the vegetables that are now adorning the Portuguese gardens" were bought in foreign countries (Welwitsch, 1855), hence his efforts to introduce into the country's cultivation a variety of plants from overseas possessions, several of which were succulents (Figueiredo et al., 2018).

We do not know (yet) when, why or by whom Camoensia was introduced into the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden. It was certainly already part of the living collection in 1926, because there is in the herbarium of the institution the record of a collection of the species in the arboretum made in this year (RB 20416). The fact is that its healthy and accessible flowers continue to support contemporary research on, for example, phylogeny (Cardoso et al., 2012; Lee et al., 2021) or pollination (Leite et al., 2021) in the Fabaceae group.

References

ALBUQUERQUE, Sara; FIGUEIRÔA, Sílvia; FELISMINO, David. The Forgotten Library of the Botanist Friedrich Welwitsch (1806-1872). E-journal of Portuguese History, v.18, n.2, p.83-112, 2020.

CARDOSO, Domingos; QUEIROZ, Luciano P. de; PENNINGTON, R. Toby, et al. Revisiting the phylogeny of papilionoid legumes: New insights from comprehensively sampled early-branching lineages. American Journal of Botany, v.99, p.1991-2013, 2012.

FIGUEIREDO, Estrela; SILVA, Vasco; SMITH, Gideon F. Friedrich Welwitsch and the horticulture of succulents in Portugal in the 19th century. Bradleya, v.36, p.200-211, 2018.

HIERN, William Philip. Introduction. In: WELWITSCH, F. e HIERN, W. P. (Ed.) Catalogue of the African plants collected by Dr. Friedrich Welwitsch in 1853-61. London: Hazell, Watson & Viney, 1896. v.1 [Dicotyledons], p.v-xvii.

JOHNSTON, Henry Hamilton. The River Congo, from Its Mouth to Bólóbó; With Notes on the Physical Geography, Natural History, Resources, and Political Aspect of the Congo Basin. Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography, v.5, n.12, p.692-711, 1883.

LEE, Chaehee; CHOI, In-Su; CARDOSO, Domingos, et al. The chicken or the egg? Plastome evolution and an independent loss of the inverted repeat in papilionoid legumes. The Plant Journal, v.107, n.3, p.861-875, 2021.

LEITE, Viviane Gonçalves; TEIXEIRA, Simone Pádua; GODOY, Fernanda, et al. Resolving the non‐papilionaceous flower of Camoensia scandens, a papilionoid legume of the core genistoid clade: development, glands and insights into the pollination and systematics of the group. Journal of Plant Research, v.134, p.823–839, 2021.

QUATTROCCHI, Umberto. CRC world dictionary of plant names: common names, scientific names, eponyms, synonyms, and etymology. Boca Raton/London/New York/Washington: CRC Press, v.1 [A-C], 1999.

WELWITSCH, Friedrich. Jardins d’acclimatação na Madeira e Angola na Africa austro-occidental. Jornal Scientifico e Litterario, v.3, p.126-127; 144-145, 1855.

______. Carta do dr . Welwischtz ao sr. Bento Antonio Alves [acompanhado de catalogo das sementes a que se refere a carta] Annaes do Conselho Ultramarino (Portugal), v.Parte Não Official, serie 1 (Fevereiro de 1854 a dezembro de 1859), n.1, p.581-592, 1859.