Hirtella triandra Sw.

• Title

  Hirtella triandra Sw.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Hirtella triandra Sw.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Hirtella triandra Teta de burra Hirtella Family Amygdalaceae Plum Family Hirtella triandra Swartz, Prodromus Flora Indiae Occidentalis 51. 1788. Attractive by loose clusters of small, white flowers, this shrub or small tree is occasional in the wet or moist parts of Porto Rico, ascending to the higher elevations, inhabiting river-banks, woodlands, and hillside thickets, it is distributed through the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles from St. Kitts to Trinidad, in Panama, and northern South America. The wood is light-brown, hard, tough, and heavy. Hirtella (Latin, hairy, referring to the hairy twigs) is a Linnaean genus, with some 60 species of tropical American trees and shrubs, and one in Madagascar.They have alternate, untoothed leaves and small flowers in terminal and axillary clusters. The calyx has 5, reflexed lobes, and there are 5 petals; there are few, several, or in some species many stamens, some of them usually imperfect (staminodes), the perfect ones borne at one side of the receptacle, the imperfect ones at the other; the filaments are very slender, longer than the petals; the ovary is 1-celled, borne at one side of the receptacle, and contains 2 ovules; the style is borne nearly at the base of the ovary. The 1-seeded fruit, quite different from that of some other genera of the Plum Family, is dry and soft. Hirtella triandra (stamens mostly 3) may form a tree about 15 meters high, but is usually much lower, and often shrubby. The slender twigs are appressed-hairy; the elliptic to lance-shaped, pointed, thin leaves are from 5 to 15 centimeters long, the mid-vein, and short-stalks hairy. The flower-clusters are from 3 to about 10 centimeters long; the ovate, or oval, hairy calyx-lobes are about 3 millimeters long, the oval or obovate petals about 5 millimeters long, the pink stamens about 15 millimeters long. The oblong-obovoid, more or less hairy fruit is 2 or 2.5 centimeters long. Another species, Hirtella rugosa, endemic in mountain forests of Porto Rico, is also illustrated in this work.