Plinia

• Authority

  Maguire, Bassett. 1969. The botany of the Guayana Highland-part VIII. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 18: 1-290.

• Family

  Myrtaceae

• Scientific Name

  Plinia

• Description

  Species Description - The following specimens evidently represent a species of Plinia, but as the plants are in fruit only, and as the branchlets and leaves are indistinguishable from those of P. pinnata and from those of the Guiana plants cited below, it would be premature at best to propose a new name for them. The leaves are elliptic-lanceolate, acutely acuminate, 5-8 cm long, 2-3.5 cm wide, mostly about 2.5 times as long as wide, glabrous except that in young leaves the midvein on the upper surface may be hirsutulous like the petioles and young branchlets; the midvein is convex above, soon glabrous; the fruits are sessile (in these specimens at leafless nodes), oblate, glabrous or nearly so, glandular-verruculose but not ridged, 1-1.5 cm in diam, described by both collectors as "orange"; the remains of the hypanthium persist as an irregular collar at the summit of the fruit; the single seed includes a fleshy embryo consisting mainly of two plano-convex cotyledons, the line of division between these parallel to the long axis of the fruit (cf Fl. Suriname 3(2): 98. 1951: "one in the upper half and one in the lower half of the fruit").

• Distribution

  Venezuela South America|