Eugenia lancea Poir.

• Title

  Eugenia lancea Poir.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Eugenia lancea Poir.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Eugenia lancea Pitangueira Black Rod-wood Family Myrtaceae Myrtle Family Eugenia lancea Poiret, in Lamarck, Encyclopédie Méthodique, Supplement 3: 122. 1813. Eugenia ludibunda Bertero; De Candolle, Prodromus 3: 280. 1828. A small tree, or a shrub, growing in moist or wet parts of Porto Rico, and on the small islands Vieques and Culebra, and distributed from Santo Domingo eastward to St. Martin. It is conspicuous when in bloom, the branches often densely covered by the small bright white flowers. It inhabits thickets and hillsides at the lower elevations. An account of the large genus Eugenia may be found with our description of Eugenia borinquensis. Eugenia lancea (lance-shaped leaves, but this feature is variable) may become about 6 meters high, but is usually lower, and shrubby. Its twigs, leaf-stalks and flower-clusters are finely hairy. The leaves are ovate, oval, oblong-lanceolate, or rarely obovate, rather thin, bluntly pointed, from 2 to 7.5 centimeters long, on stalks from 3-12 millimeters long. The flowers are in axillary or lateral clusters, usually shorter than the leaves, the individual ones on stalks from 3 to 12 millimeters long; the lobes of the calyx are about 2 mm. long, the nearly orbicular petals from 3 to 4.5 millimeters long. The nearly globular berries are from 7 to 12 millimeters in diameter.