A section consisting of six diploid (n = 11) species (14 taxa) and one natural hybrid derived from them. This section occurs in the temperate and cool temperate oak-pine forests of Mexico south of the Tropic of Cancer to Panama at elevations from 1,500 to 3,400 meters. They are all shrubs with opposite leaves. The solitary, axillary and exceptionally small flowers have floral tubes 0.1 to 1.3 cm long with smooth to lobed nectaries. The sepals are erect to reflexed and colored purplish red, pink, or white with the petals being purplish red, red, pink, or white. The stamens are in two unequal to sub-equal series. The epipetalous set is reflexed into the floral tube and the pollen is yellow. Seeds number six to thirty-six. The appearance (habitus) of the species in their natural habitat is very dependent on the height at which it occurred and which pollinators are available.
This section’s name derives from the Greek encliandra, for “enclosed male,” referring to the fact that the flower’s stamens are enclosed within the floral tube. In almost all sections of the genus Fuchsia, all 8 stamens protrude. In the Encliandra section, they are knocked back every other in the flower tube, so only 4 point outwards. The plants within this section Encliandra are either dioecious (dioecie) ie with male flowers on one plant and female flowers on another plant of the same species, or they are gynodioecic, ie female flowers on one plant and androgynous flowers on the other plant (s) of the same kind.
Encliandra parviflora was fist described by Zuccarini in 1837. However that genus and it species were shorty rendered synonymous with Fuchsia as Fuchsia encliandra by Steudel in 1840, three years later. The defunct designation was later applied to the section in which Encliandra is now at home. In 1943 Philip A. Munz classified the entire genus Fuchsia using herbarium material. But there were quite a few mistakes. Dennis Eugene Breedlove conducted the great “cleanup” in the section based on new research in 1969.
The Encliandra species are all species from Central America where they grow as small to fairly large bushes in high mountain forests in the moist and cool ravines and gorges. In the late summer, with somewhat humid and cooler nights, they are at their best. They hardly suffer from diseases and pests and some of them are also fairly hardy.
