Rhabdadenia biflora (Jacq.) Müll.Arg.
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Authority
Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.
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Family
Apocynaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Species Description - This slender, twining, white-flowered vine is restricted in habitat to Mangrove swamps; in Porto Rico its distribution appears to be local; we have seen it occsasionally in the swamps near the southern and eastern coasts. The plant is not known to inhabit the other Greater Antilles, where a related species takes its place, it is recorded as formerly found on St. Thomas, and is known to range from Guadeloupe to Trinidad and northern South America. Rhabdadenia (Greek, wand-gland, probably with reference to the fuit) is a genus established by Mueller in 1860, published in the monumental work of Martius, describing the wild plants of Brazil, which was produced under the patronage of the Emperor of Austria and the King of Bavaria in fifteen large, folio volumes from 1840 to 1870; There are about 10 species, vines or shrubs, natives to tropical America, one of them ranging north into Florida; only the one here illustrated inhabits Porto Rico. They have opposite, stalked leaves, and large flowers in small clusters, or solitary. The calyx is 5-toothed, the corolla with a nearly cylindric base, a funnelform or narrowly bell-shaped tube, and a spreading, 5-lobed limb; the 5, short stamens are borne near the top of the corolla-tube, their anthers connivent around the stigma, with short, basal appendages; there are 2 pistils, with slender styles and thick stigmas with the base dilated into a reflexed membrane. The fruit is a pair of narrow, nearly cylindric pods, containing many narrow seeds, each with a tuft of hairs at the end. Rhabdadenia biflora is a smooth, woody vine, observed as reaching a length of 8 meters. Its leaves are various in shape, from oblong to elliptic or broadest above the middle, slender-stalked, pointed or blunt, somewhat fleshy in texture and from 5 to 10 centimeters long. The flowers are stalked, few together or solitary (often 2 together, whence the specific name biflora); the broad lobes of the calyx are pointed; the white corolla is 5 or 6 centimeters long, the flowers thus quite conspicuous. The slender pods are from 10 to 12 centimeters long. The seeds are linear, 2 or 3 centimeters long, the terminal tuft of white pairs about as long or longer.
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Discussion
Mangrove Vine Bejuco de manglares Dogbane Family Echites biflora Jacquin, Enumeratio Systematica Plantarum 13. 1760. Rhabdadenia biflora Mueller, in Martius Flora Brasiliensis 6: 175. 1860.