Acnistus arborescens (L.) Schltdl.

• Title

  Acnistus arborescens (L.) Schltdl.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Acnistus arborescens (L.) Schltdl.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Gallinero Galan arboreo Family Solanaceae Potato Family Atropa arborescens Linnaeus, Centuria Plantarum 2: 10. 1756 Acnistus arborescens Schlechtendal, Linnaea 7: 67. 1832. The Potato Family is a very large one, including over 1700 species of herbs, shrubs, trees and vines, mostly natives of tropical regions, grouped in about 75 genera. Their flowers are nearly always regularly 5-lobed, and have 5 stamens and a 2- celled ovary in most of the genera; the fruit is usually a many-seeded berry, that of several kinds important as food, such as potatoes, tomatoes and peppers. Acnistus (Greek, of uncertain derivation and significance) is a genus of shrubs and trees established by the Austrian botanist Schott in 1829, with the species here illustrated as typical; some 12 species are now known, all natives of tropical America. They have broad, stalked, alternate leaves without teeth, and their slender-stalked flowers form fascicles along the twigs. The bell -shaped calyx usually has 5, short teeth; the corolla is bell-shaped or nearly funnelform, with a spreading, usually 5-lobed limb; the usually 5 stamens have slender filaments borne on the corolla-tube; the ovary contains many ovules, the style is threadlike, the stigma 2-lamellate. The globular berry contains many roughened seeds, with curved embryos. Acnistus arborescens (a little tree) is a small tree, with maximum height of about 10 meters, usually lower, sometimes shrubby. In Porto Rico it grows in wet or moist parts of the central districts at middle and higher elevations; elsewhere in the West Indies it occurs in Jamaica, St. Thomas, Saba, and on the islands from Guadeloupe to Trinidad; it is quite widely distributed in continental tropical America. The thin, oblong to elliptic leaves are from 5 to 15 centimeters long, and either pointed or blunt, their stalks about 2 centimeters long, or shorter. The flowers appear on the twigs with the new leaves, or before them, several in each fascicle, on very slender stalks from 1 to 3 centimeters long; the calyx is 3 or 4 millimeters long; the greenish-white corolla is about 12 millimeters long, with short and broad lobes; the stamens and the style are longer than the corolla. The yellow berries are 5 or 6 millimeters in diameter.