Jussiaea angustifolia Lam.

• Title

  Jussiaea angustifolia Lam.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Jussiaea angustifolia Lam.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Jussiaea angustifolia Primrose Willow Yerba de Clavo Family Onagraceae Evening-primrose Family Jussiaea angustifolia Lamarck, Encyclopédie Méthodique Botanique 3: 331. 1789. Like many other plants inhabiting fresh-water marshes, this yellow-flowered herb has a wide geographic distribution, occuring from southern Florida, and Texas, southward through the West Indies and continental tropical America to Paraguay and Bolivia, various as regards the size and width of its leaves and size of its flowers and fruits. It is frequent in Porto Rico. In botanical literature it has sometimes been confused with Jussiaea suffructicosa of Linnaeus. Bernard de Jussiaeu, in whose honor Linnaeus established the genus Jussieaea, was a famous French botanist and physician who lived from 1699 to 1777. It consists of about 50 species of perennial, herbaceous plants or small shrubs of tropical and subtropical regions, most of them American. They have alternate leaves, and solitary, axillary flowers, which are yellow in most of the species and in some of them large and conspicuous; the calyx has a cylindric or prismatic tube attached to the ovary, and a 4-parted to 6-parted limb; there are from 4 to 6 petals, often falling away soon after expanding (fugacious), and longer than the segments of the calyx; the 8 to 12 stamens are grouped in 2 series; the ovary is from 4-celled to 6-celled and the styles are united. The fruit is a long or short, ribbed capsule, containing many, minute seeds, which are set free by the deterioration of its tissues. Jussiaea angustifolia is a usually branched, upright, perennial herb, more or less hairy, but commonly nearly smooth, and about a meter high, or lower. Its short-stalked, narrow leaves (whence the specific name) are from 2.5 to 10 centimeters long, and pointed. The flowers are short-stalked; there are 4 (rarely 5), lanceolate, pointed calyx-segments from 6 to 12 millimeters long; the broad, rounded petals are longer than the calyx-segments, very thin, and fall away during the day on which they expand; there are 8, short stamens. The nearly cylindric, angled fruit is from 3 to 6 centimeters long, tapering to the base, crowned by the persistent calyx-segments, the seeds arranged in several rows in its cavities. Our illustrtion was first published in "Addisonia", plate 442, December, 1928.