CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Citharexylum L. is a New World genus of trees and shrubs distributed from southern North America through Central America and the Caribbean to Argentina and Uruguay as the southernmost distribution. Citharexylum plants are trees or shrubs, with or without spines, with flowers arranged in racemose inflorescences and drupaceous fruits. No modern studies in the genus exist, except for the treatment in regional floras, checklists or catalogues. Our results find ca. 30 valid Citharexylum species in South America, and presumably another 30 in North America, making a final number of ca. 60 valid species of Citharexylum. Greatest species diversification seems to have taken place in the south American Andean wet forests. Spiny Citharexylum species are found in the Andean high elevation regions of Peru and Bolivia, being the northern province of Peru, Cajamarca their upper north distribution site. Coarsely spinose dentate leaf margin Citharexylum species, which are also always low shrubs, are found in the Andean regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, and the different coarsely spinose dentate species have a different distributional pattern. Fasciculate haired Citharexylum species are found mostly in Ecuador and Colombia, reaching western Venezuela and northern Peru at the province of Cajamarca. Ternate leaf Citharexylum species are mostly jungle species, being found in wet areas near Amazonas phytogeographic area. Several other species seem to exhibit a similar distributional pattern, being found in the Amazonas influence areas. There are some species whose natural distribution is very ample in Central America and they reach northern South America as their southernmost distributional range. There are some six species that reach the southernmost distributional range of the genus, being mostly found in low elevation regions from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and/or southern Brazil.

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