Thunbergia alata Bojer ex Sims

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Acanthaceae

• Scientific Name

  Thunbergia alata Bojer ex Sims

• Description

  Species Description - Color in nature exhibits many conspicuous and highly interesting phenomena. That it is less constant than either form or structure has often been maintained in discussion, but can scarcely be proven statistically. Colors of flowers are highly various in some kinds of wild plants, but definitely uniform in others. The species here illustrated exhibits the somewhat unusual condition of having flowers of two different colors on different individual plants, everything else being, apparently identical; in the one the corolla is white, in the other yellow; as the white-flowered and the yellow-flowered plants usually grow in colonies, they, presumably come true to color from their seeds. We have given an account of the genus Thunbergia with our description of Thunbergia fragrans. Thunbergia alata is a slender, hairy, herbaceous vine, usually not more than 1 meter long, either climbing, or trailing. Its leaves are broad, more or less triangular in outline, sometimes with a few large teeth, pointed, from 4 to 8 centimeters long, the base heart-shaped or halberd-shaped; their stalks are flat and broadly margined, or winged (whence the specific name). The flower-stalks are mostly longer than the leaf-stalks; the bracts are broadly lance-shaped, and pointed, hairy, about 1.5 centimeters long; the calyx is cleft to about the middle; the corolla usually has a purple eye, and is from 2.5 to 4 centimeters long, either yellow, or white, as above described. The fruit is depressed-globose, hairy, from 8 to 10 millimeters in diameter, with a stout beak about a centimeter long. this vine is frequent along roads, and in waste and cultivated grounds in Porto Rico, and nearly throughout the West Indies, and is also naturalized in continental tropical America; it is a native of tropical Africa.

• Discussion

  Redadera Winged Thunbergia Acanthus Family Thunbergia alata Bojer; Sims, Botanical Magazine, plate 2591. 1825.