Byrsonima horneana Britton & Small

• Title

  Byrsonima horneana Britton & Small

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Byrsonima horneana Britton & Small

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Byrsonima Horneana Mrs. Horne's Byrsonima Family Malpighiaceae Malpighia Family Byrsonima Horneana Britton & Small; Britton & Wilson, Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands 5: 447. 1924. This rare small tree is known to us only as growing in a thicket, apparently underlain by serpentine rocks, at Guanajibo, on the western coast of Porto Rico, near Mayaguez. It was named in honor of Mrs. Francis Worth Horne, who observed it there in 1924, and made the painting from which the accompanying illustration was reproduced, first published in "Addisonia", plate 332, June, 1924, while her husband, Professor Charles E. Horne, was Dean of the College of Agriculture at Mayaguez. This painting was one of the earlier made by her, of the series now including many more than four hundred, from which a selection has been made for reproduction in "Flora Borinqueña", and which have made these volumes possible. The tree grows at Guanajibo in a thicket containing two other species of the same genus, Byrsonima cuneata and Byrsonima ophiticola, both also illustrated in this work; the three are readily distinguishable from each other by differences in flowers and in leaves. We give an account of the genus with our description of Byrsonima crassifolia; still another species occurs in Porto Rico, there thus being five in all existing here. Byrsonima Horneana is about 5 meters high, or lower, with reddish-woolly young twigs turning gray. Its leaves are elliptic, or broadest above the middle, pointed, smooth, or with a few, scattered hairs, short-stalked, from 4 to 9 centimeters long, 1.5 to 4.5 centimeters wide, narrowed, or somewhat wedge-shaped at the base. The flower-clusters are rather dense, about 6 centimeters long, or shorter; the short and slender stalks of the flowers recurve in fruit; the ovate sepals are about 3 millimeters long, and accompanied by 10 glands about one-half their length; the slender-clawed, nearly oribicular petals are yellow, fading reddish, the larger ones 6 to 7 millimeters long. The globular fruit is from 10 to 12 millimeters in diameter.