Four species of Gomesa (Gomesa flexuosa, Gomesa ranifera, Gomesa cornigera, and Gomesa riograndensis), a horticulturally important, albeit scarcely studied orchid genus, were investigated. Pollination biology was studied through fieldwork in Rio Grande do Sul in Southern Brazil during two flowering seasons.Breeding systems were studied through controlled pollinations in cultivated plants. All studied species secrete floral oils through elaiophores and are exclusively pollinated by native, oil-collecting bees of the Centridini or Tapinotaspidini tribes. Pollinarium reconfiguration after withdrawal, a feature likely promoting cross-pollination, was recorded in G. cornigera and G. riograndensis. All studied species are pollinator-dependent and either predominantly or fully self-incompatible, that is, unable to set fruit following self-pollination. The used indexes of pollination efficiency consistently scored values below 1, indicating that in all studied species less than one flower is pollinated per pollinarium removed. Accordingly, pollen loss was high, ranging from 40% to 75%. Furthermore, inflorescences in natural populations displayed low fruit sets (below 13%). Gomesa flexuosa presented the highest values of pollinarium removal (36.24%) and deposition (15.34%).Significantly, this is the only studied species bearing a tabula infraestigmatica, a column swelling that bees hold to stabilize themselves while gathering the floral oils. Since pollinators were observed in all studied species spending considerable time (up to 3 min 46 s) and visiting several (up to 19) flowers, we propose that the observed low fruit set is the result of a combination of self-incompatibility, pollinator-mediated self-pollination, and pollen loss.

The known range of Chelyocarpus ulei is extended 430 km to the north, in Caquetá, Colombia. The new locality represents the northwestern most limit of the species’ range, collected at the municipalities of Florencia, Caquetá, Colombia.

Background: The synonyms of the currently accepted scientific names are binomial names used to designate the same taxon, now in disuse due to the nomenclatural rules. We explore the evolution of the synonymy in the useful palm genus Euterpe to investigate if the inclusion of the synonyms affects the recovery of information on the uses and vernacular names. Materials and Methods:We used three search engines (Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science) to recover papers associated with the currently accepted scientific names of the Euterpe palms and the forty associated synonyms. Then we examined the information recovered on the uses and vernacular names to compare the outcomes.Results: Our results evidence the increase in the recovery of ethnobotanical information (11.1%) and vernacular names (17.8%) when the synonyms are used. Recently described species had less synonyms than their early-described counterparts. In addition, our results revealed that the more useful Euterpe species had more vernacular names. Conclusions:The accurate identification of the synonyms for accepted species facilitates and improves the recovery of information by increasing the amount of material retrieved from the web. As expected, most useful palms have more vernacular names. Google Scholar has shown the better performance using synonyms, but the outcomes for the currently accepted scientific names were similar for the three search engines.

Reportamos por primera vez para Colombia Epidendrum porphyreonocturnum Hágsater & R. Jiménez y Epidendrum whittenii Hágsater & Dodson, dos especies de orquídeas encontradas en el Piedemonte Andino-Amazónico del departamento de Caquetá. Estas especies eran previamente conocidas solo de Ecuador y Perú. Las dos especies fueron categorizadas como Vulnerables de acuerdo con los criterios de la IUCN debido a las amenazas sobre su hábitat y el bajo número de poblaciones conocidas. Estos reportes enriquecen el conocimiento de la orquideoflora colombiana y resaltan la necesidad de realizar mayores esfuerzos en pro del conocimiento y la conservación del piedemonte.