Pereskia violacea

Name and distribution

POWO accepts the name Pereskia violacea and lists the Brazilian states Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais. The species is a shrub or tree of seasonally dry tropics. The names Pereskia grandifolia var. violacea, P. grandifolia subsp. violacea and Rhodocactus grandifolius subsp. violaceus refer to the same taxon in former treatments. [2-WWW]

Diagnostic traits and habitat

The original variety description gave shrubs about 2–4 m tall. Leaves are elongated, dark green, fairly fleshy and usually distinctly pointed, with the tip bent downwards. The clearest traits, however, concern living buds. Bracts are dark purple to intensely purplish pink, thick and reflexed, so they may resemble the coloured perianth even before the flower opens. [Leuenberger 1986, Pereskia grandifolia var. violacea description]

Inner tepals mostly reach 10–15 mm, sometimes 18 mm. Colour ranges from pale pink to purplish pink, and anthers are pale yellow. Unlike Pereskia grandifolia, the bracts are distinctly purple already in bud. The ripe fruit may be narrowly obtriangular, with a small apical depression. [Leuenberger 1986, Pereskia grandifolia var. violacea description]

Leuenberger documented sites at about 600–1400 m, in the transition between forest and wooded cerrado, termed cerradão, and in secondary forests. Some plants near houses came from plantings. Flowering was observed from September to April and fruits in April. These data concern local conditions in Espírito Santo and Minas Gerais. [Leuenberger 1986, Pereskia grandifolia var. violacea description]

Colour and flowering variation

Leuenberger described plants with purplish pink bracts and buds and variable flower appearance among cultivated specimens. Flowers and fruits at different stages could be observed simultaneously on branched reproductive clusters. The description comes from a period when the plant was still treated as a lower-ranked taxon within Pereskia grandifolia. [Leuenberger 2008]

Separating data from Pereskia grandifolia

The 2016 germination paper gives the name Pereskia grandifolia, but does not show that the material belonged to the former subspecies violacea. Its percentages and temperature indications therefore remain in the P. grandifolia profile. Separating names preserves the usefulness of older sources without assigning results to a plant whose identity in the experiment was unconfirmed. [Souza et al. 2016] [2-WWW]