Colubrina
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Authority
Acevedo-Rodríguez, Pedro & collaborators. 1996. Flora of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 78: 1-581.
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Family
Rhamnaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Genus Description - Trees or shrubs, commonly scandent. Leaves alternate, the blades entire or serrate, coriaceous, usually bearing glandular spots; stipules lateral and basal, or rarely intrapetiolar, deciduous. Flowers bisexual, actinomorphic, several in axillary cymes or umbel-like thyrses or rarely solitary; hypanthium crowned by 5 spreading, triangular calyx lobes; petals yellowish green to whitish, hood-shaped, sessile or shortly clawed at base, shorter than the calyx lobes; stamens as long as the petals, at some stages usually hooded by the petals, the filaments free; nectary disk annular, fleshy, adnate to the base of ovary; ovary partly superior, 3-locular, each locule with a single ovule, the style slender, trilobed. Fruit a trilocular septicidal capsule, splitting into 3 ventrally dehiscent pyrenelike mericarps; seeds obovate in outline, lustrous, brown to black.
Distribution and Ecology - A pantropical genus of 31 species, most of which are centered in tropical America.