Nance Macho, Accidentally

Sometimes I think I should name this blog The Accidental Botanist. So many of my serious efforts at identification have ended up erroneous whereas I often stumble across an identification that just “clicks” with something I’ve seen recently. So it was with the nance macho, the common name in Spanish. [Nance is pronounced NAN'-say.]

I’ll get back to that name later, but one day I noticed a tree in bloom near the seasonal stream bed (dry now) that we cross whenever we leave our property. I took a few photos and thought that someday I’d sit down and try to figure out what it was.

Within a couple of days I was thumbing through Trees and Shrubs of Panama and saw a picture of a tree in bloom that almost exactly matched mine. (The tree below was one I spotted later on the road to Potrerillos, not the one by the stream bed. This image gives you a much better idea of the whole tree than did the stream bed photo.)

 

Since it seemed almost too good to be true that I would have my ID so quickly, I thought I’d better check the Trees, Shrubs, and Palms of Panama web site to see whether there might be other plants in the same genus or family that might cause me to confuse my plant with that in the book.It was a pleasant surprise, then, to find that the nance macho plant is not only the only representative of its genus in Panama, it is the only representative of its entire family!

Nance Macho is in the Clethraceae Family

I can rarely remember a plant family name unless it makes some sort of sense to me. This family’s name begins with “Clethra,” so I looked that up in Dave’s botanary, the first place I turn to when I want to learn a Latin term for a plant. Clethra is from the Greek klethra, which means alder (alder leaves are similar to Clethra leaves, presumably).Well, I don’t (or at least, didn’t) have a clear idea in my own mind what alder leaves look like, so I found some excellent pictures on the web from 57 North. [A personal note: I found this image and wrote for permission to use it. In the very kind reply from Colin, he asked me to read this page. It was devastating to learn of a fine talent, just to have it snatched away. I can only imagine what it's been like for Colin.]

Now, here are some close-ups of the nance macho leaves:

I have to say, the resemblance doesn’t exactly jump out at me. Possibly I’m distracted by the toothed or serrated edges of the alder leaves. However, when I just look at the central vein and at how the secondary veins move away from it at an upward angle, I begin to see the similarity.

The Clethraceae family is distributed mostly in the western hemisphere, with a spotty presence in the eastern hemisphere. [The map below is from the Global Bioversity Information Facility, and I used the nifty Species Distribution Widget for the Mac OS X Dashboard to get at the map quickly.]

My reliable field guide to the woody plants of this area, by Alwyn H. Gentry, tells me that only one genus in this family occurs in northwest South America, and I’ve already mentioned that this is true for Panama as well. A newer reference book for the entire neotropics, by Maas and Westra, names two genera for the region - Clethra (with 45 species) and Purdiaea (11 species).

When I want to know how to recognize the family, I turn to Gentry. The following combination of traits should be enough to peg the family:

Alternate, simple leaves - okay. The leaves are alternate, but clustered at the end of the stem, so it’s not so obvious that they are indeed alternate. The leaves certainly are simple, not compound.

Leaves whitish below from star-shaped hairs - hmm, well, these leaves are lighter in color on the bottom than on the top, but I wouldn’t call them whitish. There are, however, enough hairs on the bottom of the leaf to give it a distinctly fuzzy feel.

Flowers small and white, in long narrow spike-like racemes - yes, the flowers are small and white, arranged in long, narrow, spike-like clusters. [A raceme, by dictionary definition, is a cluster of flowers attached by short stalks at equal distances along a central stem. If you click on the image below to enlarge it, you'll see all these characteristics.]

10 Stamens - yes. The small individual flowers are hard to photograph, but here’s a slightly wilted one clipped from the image above in which you can see all the dark brown stamens.

I don’t think there’s any question that nance macho is a member of the Clethraceae family. Further, since Trees and Shrubs of Panama lists Clethra lanata as the only species in that family known to be in Panama, we do know the genus and species name as well.

Nance Macho = Clethra lanata

We know that Clethra means alder. So, what does Dave’s botanary say about lanata? It means “woolly.” Yes, it’s true there are hairs on many places on this plant, not just on the bottom of the leaves. For instance, look at these “wooly” twigs:

Also, the leaves themselves are hairy on both top and bottom - not just on the bottom as is the case for the whole family. So the woolly description fits.Regarding leaves - alder-like teeth may be present in younger leaves, but teeth are “absent or barely noticeable” in mature leaves (Zuchowski). So that may explain some of my confusion when trying to see the similarity to alder leaves.The bark is gray brown and slightly fissured (Zuchowski). The image to the left, below, is the trunk and to the right is a clip from it showing the bark fissures.

The flowers themselves have a sweet scent. Zuchowski noted that this tree would make a nice ornamental - it has an interesting shape, nice trunk, and those sweet-smelling flowers. Apparently, the tree can grow on steep slopes and may therefore aid in erosion control (Zuchowski).Sloths appreciate leaves from it, or at least from the Clethra family. In a study of the three-toed sloth in Venezuela the leaves of Clethraceae, Cecropiaceae, and Clusiaceae accounted for 77% of the feeding records.

The distribution of Clethra lanata does show that it grows in Venezuela, so it’s neat to think of sloths moving sloooowly through a nance macho tree.

As to that Common Name - nance macho

Nance is a fruit high in vitamin C. There’s an excellent description at Fruits of Warm Climates for anyone who wants more detail. It’s small and yellow, and is harvested by picking it up from the ground. When you look at the fruit of the nance macho, you can see a similarity. The photo on the left (from wikipedia) is of the nance, and that on the right (from Trees, Shrubs, and Palms of Panama) is of the nance macho.

 

However, the plants are completely unrelated. The nance is Byrsonima crassifolia, in the family Malpighiaceae (an earlier post devoted to the nance is here), whereas the nance macho is, as we’ve just learned, Clethra lanata, in the family Clethraceae. You can see how different the plants really are if you look at their individual flowers. Again, the nance is on the left and the nance macho is on the right:

The petals of the nance flower are clawed, as is typical of the Malpighiaceae family. The petals of the nance macho flower are more like a miniature tulip, seeming to protect the reproductive parts inside.

If you look at the flower clusters, though, you might see a vague similarity. Again, nance on the left and nance macho on the right.

With that, I’ll leave it to you to decide how nance macho got its common name.