Nepsera aquatica (Aubl.) Naudin

• Title

  Nepsera aquatica (Aubl.) Naudin

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Nepsera aquatica (Aubl.) Naudin

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Nepsera aquatica Altea Nepsera Family Melastomaceae Meadow-beauty Family Melastoma aquatica Aublet, Histoire des Plantes de la Guiane Française 1: 430. 1775. Spennera aquatica Martius ; De Candolle, Prodromus 3: 116. 1828. Nepsera aquatica Naudin, Annales des Sciences Naturelles III.13:28.1849. A slender, broad-leaved, small-flowered, shrubby plant, inhabiting woodlands, thickets and grassy banks, common in the wet and moist parts of Porto Rico, ascending to at least 600 meters elevation, its white, or pink flowers attractive. It is distributed through the Greater Antilles, in the Lesser Antilles from Guadeloupe to Trinidad, and on the continent from Brazil to Colombia and Central America. Nepsera (the name a bad anagram of Spennera , the name of a related genus of the same family) is monotypic, consisting only of the species here illustrated. Nepsera aquatica (aquatic, but the name was not well chosen) is a loosely hairy, or nearly smooth, upright shrub from 0.5 to 1.5 meters high, the larger plants much branched; it is very slender, and may give the impression of being herbaceous. The thin, slender-stalked, ovate, pointed leaves are from 2 to 7 centimeters long, 5-nerved, or 7-nerved, finely toothed, with a rounded, or somewhat heart-shaped base. The flowers are loosely clustered on long and very slender stalks; the calyx has an ovoid tube, attached to the ovary, 2 or 3 millimeters long, and 4, narrowly lance-shaped lobes; there are 4, oblong-lanceolate, pointed, white or pink petals 5 or 6 millimeters long; the 8 stamens are alternately unequal in length, their filaments smooth; the ovary is 3-celled, many-ovuled, the style slender, the stigma very small. The globose, 3-valved capsule is about 2 millimeters in diameter, the many, minute seeds pitted.