Guilandina

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. & Millspaugh, Charles F. 1920. The Bahama Flora.

• Family

  Caesalpiniaceae

• Scientific Name

  Guilandina

• Description

  Species Description - Woody vines, the stems and branches mostly armed with stout recurved prickles. Leaves large, petioled, bipinnate, the leaflets often punctate. Flowers rather large, yellow, racemose or paniculate, the narrow bracts deciduous. Calyx-lobes 5, imbricated, longer than the tube. Petals 5, nearly alike, spreading. Stamens 10, the filaments pubescent below, the anthers longitudinally dehiscent. Pods oval or elliptic, not much longer than wide, subcoriaceous, compressed, usually prickly, splitting along the sutures. Seeds hard, globose or ovoid, yellow, gray or black, smooth, scarcely flattened. [Commemorates Melchior Guilandinus, a German traveller and botanist who died in 1590.] About 12 species, mostly West Indian. Type species: Guilandina Boiiduc L.