Reproductive biology of Jacarada ulei Bureau & K. Schum. (Bignoniaceae)

Abstract

Phenological events and floral biology of Jacaranda ulei were studied. After the first rains, new branches, leaves and flowers are produced. The flowering period lasts for
 40
 almost three months; a great amount of flowers is produced; nectar is abundant. It was
 identified 15 species of bees visiting the plant, also ants, butterflies and hummingbirds.
 The flowers, fruits and seeds suffered from predatism and fungus attack, but the leaves
 remained intact. The species is strongly selfincompatible, 30% of the flowers from
 manually crossed pollination developed into fruits against only 10% of the naturally
 pollinated ones. The necessity of having compatible individuals should be taken into
 consideration for cultivating this plant in gardens or herbalists.

What happens when fire is too early? Observations of fire‐stimulated fruit opening releasing underdeveloped seeds for an endemic Cerrado shrub

“…Considering the hypothesized benefits of fire-stimulated fruit opening, we interpret our observations as the effect of a fire occurring before the fruit maturation in a shrub that is particularly susceptible to fire damage. In fact, the fruits of J. ulei are positioned within the zone of highest flame temperatures (Miranda et al, 2009;Ribeiro, 2003) and, for some seeds, the heating may have crossed the survival threshold. However, a large part of the seeds could simply be immature and not ready to germinate as fruits still had up to 2 months before regular seed dispersal.…”

“…Its individuals may grow up to 1.5 m tall and are fire-tolerant, showing strong resprouting ability after fire (plants are top-killed but resprout after a few weeks). Its dry dehiscent fruits are produced during the wet season and do not have serotiny, opening regularly every year during mid-dry season (July to early August) to release several small anemochoric seeds (Ribeiro, 2003).…”