Sauvagesia erecta L.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Ochnaceae

• Scientific Name

  Sauvagesia erecta L.

• Description

  Species Description - A low, slender, small-leaved herb with small, attractive flowers, solitary on very slender stalks in the leaf-axils, inhabiting grassy banks, frequent in Porto Rico in the wet or moist districts, from sea-level to at least 900 meters elevation. Geographically it is distributed in Santo Domingo and Haiti, in the Lesser Antilles from Saba to Trinidad, and widely through continental tropical America north to southern Mexico. It is the only species of its genus in the Porto Rico Flora. Sauvagesia, a Linnaean genus, commemorates François Boissier de Sauvages, a physician, and professor in Montpellier, who lived from 1706 to 1767. It consists of about 12 species of tropical American herbaceous plants, with small leaves, their stipules characteristically fringed, the flowers regular, and 5-parted. The sepals are appressed to the capsular fruit; the petals fall away; there are 5 perfect stamens, and 5, petal-like, imperfect ones (staminodes); the ovary is 3-celled at the base, the style unbranched, the stigma small. The fruit is a 3-valved, many-seeded capsule. Sauvagesia erecta (upright, but the name is not definitive) is annual, upright, or reclining, slender, from 15 to 60 centimeters long. The thin, toothed, pointed leaves are oblong to lanceolate, or oblanceolate, from 0.5 to 5.5 centimeters long, with stalks from 1 to 4 millimeters long; the lanceolate, long-fringed, stipules are from 3 to 6 millimeters long. The flowers are borne on very slender, axillary stalks; the lanceolate, pointed sepals are from 4.5 to 6 millimeters long, the obovate, violet to white petals about as long. The capsule is a little longer than the sepals, the small seeds minutely pitted.

• Discussion

  Yerba de San Martin St. Martin's-wort Ochna family Sauvagesia erecta Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 203. 1753.