Cerdana alliodora Ruiz & Pav.

• Title

  Cerdana alliodora Ruiz & Pav.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Cerdana alliodora Ruiz & Pav.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Cerdana alliodora Capa Capaw Family Ehretiaceae Ehretia Family Cerdana alliodora Ruiz and Pavon, Flora Peruviana et Chilensis 2: 47.1799. Cordia alliodora Chamisso, Linnaea 8: 121. 1833. A large tree, with alternate, untoothed leaves, and white flowers in large, terminal clusters, frequent in Porto Rico, ascending to at least 900 meters elevation, growing also on Vieques. Its range extends westward through Santo Domingo, Haiti, and eastern Cuba, eastward through the Virgin Islands, in the Lesser Antilles from Antigua to Trinidad, and widely through continental tropical America. Spanish Elm is another popular English name. Cerdana (commemorates Franciseo Cerdá y Rico) is a genus established by the Spanish botanists Ruiz and Pavon, in their classical folio work upon the Flora of Peru and Chile. There are only a few species, the one here illustrated typical, and the only one inhabiting Porto Rico. The flowers have an obconic or cylindric, 10-ribbed calyx which is from 3-toothed to 5-toothed; the salverform, withering-persistent corolla has a tube about as long as the calyx, the usually 5, contorted lobes often as long; the stamens, borne at the base of the corolla, are as many as its lobes; the 2 styles are each 2-cleft. The fruit is described as 1-celled and oblong. Cerdana alliodora (odor of garlic) is a tree, from 8 to 20 meters high, its twigs and flower-clusters stellate-hairy. The leaves vary from oblong to elliptic, lance-shaped, or wider above the middle than below, and from 5 to 15 centimeters long; they are rather thin in texture, pointed, stellate-hairy on the under side, their stalks about 2 centimeters long, or shorter. The numerous flowers form branched clusters, sometimes 30 centimeters broad, the individual ones stalkless, in little bunches; the stellate-velvety calyx is from 4 to 7 millimeters long, and strongly ribbed; the white corolla, fading brown, has oblong-spatulate lobes about as long as the calyx. The foliage of this tree appears to be less hairy in moist regions than in dry.