Miconia laevigata (L.) D. Don

• Title

  Miconia laevigata (L.) D. Don

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Miconia laevigata (L.) D.Don

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Miconia laevigata Camasey Smooth Miconia Family Melastomaceae Meadow-beauty Family Melastoma laevigata Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, edition 10, 1022.1759. Melastoma portoricensis Sprengel, Neue Entdeckungen 3: 61. 1822. Miconia laevigata De Candolle, Prodromus 3: 188. 1828. Camasay is a popular Spanish name used for many kinds of shrubs of the Meadow-beauty Family, characterized by strongly, several-ribbed leaves, and much resembling each other. The one here illustrated is common in woodlands and thickets in wet and moist parts of Porto Rico, ascending to at least 700 meters elevation, and grows also on Vieques; it is distributed nearly throughout the West Indies and continental tropical America. Miconia, commemorating D. Micon, a Spanish physician, is a genus established by the Spanish authors Ruiz and Pavon, in 1794; it includes an immense number of species of shrubs and trees, probably 600 or more, all natives of tropical America. Their leaves are opposite, their small, 5-parted flowers borne in terminal,usually broad clusters. The small calyx, attached to the ovary, has a toothed, or lobed limb, and there are 5, spreading petals; the usually 10 stamens have various kinds of anthers, in the different species. The few-celled ovary contains many ovules, and the style is undivided. The fruits are small, few-seeded berries. Miconia laevigata (smooth) is usually a shrub, about 2 meters high, or lower, but may become a small tree about 6 meters high, its twigs and flower-clusters scurfy. The oblong, or elliptic, pointed, rather thin leaves are from 8 to 20 centimeters long, 5-ribbed from base to apex, smooth, or nearly so, the margins toothed, or continuous, their stalks about 2 centimeters long, or shorter. The flower-clusters are about as long as the leaves, or shorter, the small, individual flowers nearly stalkless; the calyx is about 3 millimeters long, the white, or pale pink petals 3 or 4 millimeters long, the stamens have short anthers. The globose, blue berries are about 3 millimeters in diameter.