Bradburya virginiana (L.) Kuntze

• Title

  Bradburya virginiana (L.) Kuntze

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Bradburya virginiana (L.) Kuntze

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Bradburya virginiana Conchita Butterfly Pea Family Fabaceae Pea Family Clitoria virginiana Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 753. 1753. Centrosema Virginianum Bentham, Annalen des Wiener Museums 2: 120.1838. Bradburya virginiana Kuntze, Revisio Genera Plantarum 164. 1891. Remarkably various in shape and size of leaflets and in size and color of flowers, and one of the most widely distributed of all American wild plants, this slender, perennial, slightly woody vine is frequent on banks and hillsides, usually in thickets, at lower and middle elevations in Porto Rico, growing also on the small islands Mona, Vieques, Cayo Icacos and Culebra. It ranges nearly throughout the West Indies and tropical and subtropical continental America, extending north to New Jersey and Arkansas and also inhabits tropical Africa. Bradburya, dedicated, in 1817, by the naturalist Rafinesque, to John Bradbury, who travelled in America early in the 19th Century, consists of about 30 species of slender vines, with stipulate, 3-foliolate leaves, and large, bracteolate flowers, few together, or solitary in the leaf-axils. The bell-shaped calyx is nearly equally 5-toothed, or 5-lobed; the standard petal is orbicular, clawed, with a spur at the base, the obovate wing-petals and the keel are curved; there are 10 stamens, 9 of them united by their filaments; the style is incurved. The long, narrow, flat pod has thick-margined valves, and splits longitudinally, releasing the seeds. Bradburya virginiana (first described from Virginia) is a finely hairy vine about a meter long, or shorter, with small, narrow, pointed stipules. The 3 leaflets of the stalked leaves vary from linear to ovate, they are netted-veined and from 2 to 5 centimeters long. The flowers are 4 together, or fewer, on stalks about as long as the leaf-stalks, subtended by ovate, nerved bractlets; they are purple, violet, or nearly white, and from 2.5 to 4 centimeters long, and broad, the calyx-lobes narrow. The pod is from 10 to 13 centimeters long, about 4 millimeters wide and long-tipped. There are 2 other Bradburyas in the Porto Rico Flora; of these Bradburya pubescens is also illustrated in this work.