Erythrina corallodendron L.

• Title

  Erythrina corallodendron L.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Erythrina corallodendron L.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Erythrina corallodendrum Coral Tree Piñon espinosa Family Fabaceae Pea Family Erythrina Corallodendrum Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 706. 1753. Called also Baumortel, this tree has a wide natural distribution in tropical America, growing on most of the West Indian Islands and also on the continental mainlands, in climates of relatively low rainfall. In Porto Rico it is mostly restricted to the southwestern districts, but is nowhere common, occuring only as isolated individuals, or in small groups; the largest that we have learned about were reported to us in 1930, seen above Yauco, by Mr. C. Z. Bates of the Forest Service, reaching a height of 15 meters. The trunk and larger branches are formidably armed with sharp prickles up to 2 centimeters long, stout enough to cause painful wounds. The clustered coral-red flowers gave the tree both its specific botanical name and its English name. The genus Erythrina (name from the Greek, red) comprises some 30 species of trees and shrubs, all of tropical distribution; all have 3-foliolate leaves; the flowers of some kinds are orange-color, and of others yellow. Another native species, Erythrina horrida, found at Quebradillas and on Vieques Island grows also in the Virgin Islands where it is known as Cockspur; it differs only slightly from the coral-tree and is, perhaps, better regarded as a race rather than a species. Three exotic kinds have been introduced into Porto Rico for coffee-shade or roadside planting, and have become naturalized; these are 1. Erythrina Poeppigiana, Bucare, or Bois immortelle, a very tall tree with showy, orange flowers, which often carpet the ground when falling, its branches and trunk prickly, a native of Peru. 2. Erythrina Berteroana, Machete, an unarmed, small tree, with narrow pink flowers, native of Columbia, and found also in Cuba and Santo Domingo. 3. Erythrina glauca, Bucago, a large tree, prickly, at least when young, the broad flowers orange and brown, is rather widely distributed in tropical America, but does not appear to be native in Porto Rico. The leaves of the Coral Tree are usually smooth, but sometimes sparingly prickly; the leaflets are obliquely rhombic in shape, pointed, and from 5 to 15 centimeters long, stalked, and subtended by a pair of small stipels. The very conspicuous flowers form dense, stalked clusters, commonly borne at the ends of leafless twigs; they are narrow, with a bell-shaped calyx from 7 to 12 milllimeters long, the folded, largest petal (standard) is 5 or 6 centimeters, the others (wings and keel) shorter than the calyx, or little longer; the 10 stamens are enclosed by the folded standard, the filaments of 9 of them united. The pod is narrow, 10 to 15 centimeters long, about 1 centimeter wide, constricted between the scarlet seeds, which usually have a black spot. Our illustration was first used in Addisonia, plate 404, in 1927.