Karludovika

Carlyudovica ( lat. Carludovica ) is a genus of plants from the Cyclanthus family. Includes 4 species native to tropical America from Belize and Guatemala to Ecuador and Bolivia. The Latin name is given in honor of the Spanish king Charles IV and his wife Maria-Louise of Parma ^[2] .

These are either curly vines equipped with aerial roots, or palm-shaped undersized plants with a short, thickened stem and with beautiful wide three-five-dissected fan-shaped leaves on long petioles. Flowers of the same sex, male and female, gathered in balls on cylindrical cobs. Each glomerulus consists of a central female flower and four peripheral male ones. The male flower has a concave, fleshy receptacle at the base, equipped along the edge with a double row of numerous tepals. There are many stamens (about 80); their filaments are short, anthers are elongated, opening with a longitudinal crack. In the female flower, the receptacle is also concave; perianth, preserved by the fruit, about four leaves; opposite to each leaf, a peculiar organ is placed, which is taken as a modified stamen (staminode); it is a rather long and thick thread curved down; when the fetus ripens, it falls off. Ovary lower, single-nested, with four wall placenta, many ovules. The column is very short, about four stupid stigmas. The fruit is a tetrahedral multi-seeded berry.

The most important species in practical terms is Carludovica palmata , which grows in Peru and New Grenada. Light and mobile shuttles are made from the stem of this species, oil is extracted from the seeds; the leaves go to the roofs of the huts and, mainly, to the manufacture of the so-called Panama hats , for which they are split into thin plates, soaked, dried and bleached.

Carludovica divergens is added to some varieties of the hallucinogenic drink Ayahuasca .