The Gunnera gallery: subgenus Panke
Images and an introduction to the plant family Gunneraceae
Plant parts
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Gunnera tinctoria and tree ferns in Golden Gate Park. (Older synonyms are G. chilensis and G. scabra). Charles Darwin, when exploring the island of Tanquil (part of modern Chile) in 1834, noted the "noble" Gunnera. "I one day noticed, growing on the sandstone cliffs, some very fine plants of the panke (Gunnera scabra), which somewhat resembles the rhubarb on a gigantic scale.
For an excellent photo of G. insignis in its natural habitat in Costa Rica, see this, from Wikipedia commons. Some species in this genus are now regarded as invasive plants in mild temperate regions, and naturalized populations are reported from New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, Cornwall and parts of coastal California around the San Francisco Bay Area. Nevertheless they remain a popular and impressive garden plant, especially the similar G. manicata (larger leaves) and G. tinctoria (smaller leaves and more succulent inflorescences), see e.g. here, or here, or here. For the impressive Gunnera petaloideaof Hawaii see thee photos from Dr. G. Carr, University of Hawaii. A range of other Panke photos can be found here. |
Subgenera |
This page was produced by Dr. Dorian Q Fuller, Lecturer in Archaeobotany at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London (with a sideline in the botany of Gunnera)