Ephedra compacta

Rose 1909

Common names

Taxonomic notes

The type was collected by J. N. Rose and J. S. Rose near Tehuacán, Puebla, in September, 1906. Type, U. S. National Herbarium no. 454055 (Rose 1909). In the North American Ephedra clade, E. compacta is "the earliest divergent species, albeit with low statistical support" (Ickert-Bond and Renner 2016).

Description

Dioecious, compact, erect or spreading shrub to 0.5 m high; branches stiff, hard, nearly round, up to 2.5 mm thick, opposite or whorled at the nodes, angle of divergence from stem about 37°; internodes 0.5-3 cm long; young stems gray-green, glaucous, later becoming gray; with several longitudinal furrows, bark gray-brown, lightly fissured and cracked; terminal buds about 1.5 mm long, conical; leaves opposite, 1.5-3 mm long, apex obtuse, connate for 1/2 to 7/8 their length; sheath chartaceous, red-brown in earlier stages, later gray and divided, subpersistent; pollen cones not seen; seed cones solitary or paired at the nodes of the young branches, ovate, 4-8 mm long, almost sessile, with 3-5 pairs of bracts, broad-ovate, 4-5 mm long, 3-5 mm wide, 1/8 to 3/4 connate when mature, the inner pairs red and succulent. Seeds paired, light brown to chestnut, almost smooth, 3.5-5.5 × 2-3 mm, slightly emergent from the bracts (Cutler 1939).

Distribution and Ecology

Mexico: Coahuila, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Nuevo León, Oaxaca, Puebla, Queretaro, San Luis Potosí, and Zacatecas. Found primarily in desert scrub at elevations of 1600 to 2400 m in the Southern Chihuahuan Desert, within the Sierra Madre Oriental and the Mexican Plateau, and in some southern disjunct areas that have biotic and environmental affinities with the Chihuahuan Desert. Although the plants are wind-pollinated, the seeds, which are enclosed in red fleshy seed cones, are dispersed by birds (Loera et al. 2017).

Remarkable Specimens

No data as of 2023.03.03.

Ethnobotany

Observations

See the observations on iNaturalist, accessed 2021.12.29.

Remarks

The epithet refers to the "compact" growth habit (Rose 1909).

Citations

Cutler, H. C. 1939. Monograph of the North American species of the genus Ephedra. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 26:373-427. Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2021.12.28.

Ickert-Bond, S. M., and S. S. Renner. 2016. The Gnetales: Recent insights on their morphology, reproductive biology, chromosome numbers, biogeography, and divergence times. Journal of Systematics and Evolution 54:1–16.

Loera, I., S. M. Ickert‐Bond, and V. Sosa. 2017. Pleistocene refugia in the Chihuahuan Desert: the phylogeographic and demographic history of the gymnosperm Ephedra compacta. Journal of Biogeography 44(12):2706–2716. doi:10.1111/jbi.13064.

Rose, J. N. 1909. Studies of Mexican and Central American plants No. 6. Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 12: 261. Available: Biodiversity Heritage Library, accessed 2021.12.19.

See also

Ickert-Bond, S. M., and M. F. Wojciechowski. 2004. Phylogenetic relationships in Ephedra (Gnetales): evidence from nuclear and chloroplast DNA sequence data. Systematic Botany 29(4):834–849. doi:10.1600/0363644042451143.

Species profile at Plants of the World Online, accessed 2021.12.29.