Cumulopuntia
Cumulopuntia, Kakteen Südamerika 2: 399. 1980 sec. Hunt 2016
- Type: Cumulopuntia ignescens
Content
Taxon standing
Category B. The genus is monophyletic based on phylogenetic studies that support the clade based on a sufficiently dense or even complete sampling, or support a monotypic genus as a distinct lineage, but do not provide a new taxonomic treatment at the species level. In many cases, older classical taxonomic synopses or a monographic treatment exist for these genera providing a reliable assessment of the species included.
Notes
Phylogenetics: Griffith & Porter (2009) found no support for a monophyletic Cumulopuntia, but it was also not contradicted. Cumulopuntia was then confirmed as monophyletic by Ritz & al. (2012). Cumulopuntia falls in two clades in the molecular phylogeny, one consisting of C. sphaerica (C. F. Först.) E. F. Anderson and related taxa from the W Andean slopes of Chile and Peru, characterized by forming dwarf shrubs with easily detachable stem segments, and another consisting of Cumulopuntia s.str., characterized by growth in often dense cushions, with firmly attached stem segments (Griffith & Porter 2009; Ritz & al. 2012). For the C. sphaerica clade, the generic name Sphaeropuntia was recently published, but its circumscription is not yet fully resolved, and it this thus better treated as synonym for the time being.A
Bibliography
A. Hernández-Ledesma, P., Berendsohn, W. G., Borsch, T., von Mering, S., Akhani, H., Arias, S., Castañeda-Noa, I., Eggli, U., Eriksson, R., Flores-Olvera, H., Fuentes-Bazán, S., Kadereit, G., Klak, C., Korotkova, N., Nyffeler, R., Ocampo, G. & Ochoterena, H. 2015: A taxonomic backbone for the global synthesis of species diversity in the angiosperm order Caryophyllales. – Willdenowia 45(3): 281-383