Rourea surinamensis Miq.

• Title

  Rourea surinamensis Miq.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Rourea surinamensis Miq.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Rourea surinamensis Bejuco de garrote Strangling Vine Family Connaraceae Connarus Family Rourea surinamensis Miguel, Linnaeus 26: 221. 1853. This woody vine, inhabiting forests and thickets, has very stiff, twining, stems and branches, firmly clasping shrubs or trees on which it climbs, and from this habit its English and Spanish names have been assigned; it is also known as Juan caliente, but we do not know how this name originated; we have learned of no English name applied to it in Porto Rico, where it is frequent or occasional in wet or moist districts, ranging from near sea-level to higher elevations. It grows also in Jamaica, Cuba, Santo Domingo, the southern Lesser Antilles and northern South America, the specific botanical name referring to Surinam, or Dutch Guiana. The genus Rourea (the name from Roura, a town in French Guiana), first described by the French botanist Aublet in 1775, consists of about 40 kinds of woody vines, shrubs and small trees, of tropical distribution in America, Asia and Africa; only the one here illustrated is found in Porto Rico. They have compound leaves of from 3 to several leaflets (rarely only 1 leaflet); some of their twigs commonly terminate in a stiff hook or coil, and their flowers are small and clustered; they have a 5-lobed calyx which remains at the base of the fruit, and there are 5 separate petals and 10 stamens with small anthers; the ovary is composed of a 5 carpels, but only 1 of them usually matures in fruiting, the others being imperfect; the one which ripens forms a small, 1-seeded pod, which splits along one side. Rourea surinamensis is a vine from 2 to 4 meters long, or longer, with long-stalked, smooth leaves of 3 to 7 leathery, oblong to elliptic, pointed, shining leaflets from 3 to 12 centimeters long, borne on short stalks. The clusters of flowers are from 6 to 10 centimeters long, appearing among the leaves, each flower borne on a short and very slender stalk; the calyx is about 4 millimeters long, its lobes rather broad; the petals are white, from 4 to 5 millimeters long, and a little longer than the stamens; the ovary is hairy. The fruit is obliquely short-cylindric, about 2 centimeters long or somewhat shorter, from 4 to 6 milimeters in diameter, red, shading into green, the seed dark brown and shining.