Phytolacca rivinoides Kunth & Bouché

• Title

  Phytolacca rivinoides Kunth & Bouché

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Phytolacca rivinoides Kunth & C.D.Bouché

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Phytolacca rivinoides Juan de Vargas Clambering pokeweed Family Phytolaccaceae Pokeweed Family Phytolacca rivinoides Kunth and Bouché. Index Seminum Horto Botanico Berclinensi 1848: 15. 1848. This weak, smooth, vine-like, herbaceous plant, with long and slender clusters of small, white, or pinkish flowers, followed by small, black berries, is common in moist parts of Porto Rico, ascending to high elevations; it is distributed through the Greater Antilles, through the Lesser Antilles from St. Kitts to Trinidad, and on the continent from Guatemala to French Guiana and Brazil . Phytolacca (referring to the crimson juice of the berries of some species) is a Linnaean genus of some 24 species, most of them tropical in distribution, but the typical one, Phytolacca americana, inhabits eastern North America. They are perennial herbs, with alternate, stalked, untoothed leaves, and small, regular flowers in slender clusters. The flowers have 5 sepals but no petals, and there are few or many stamens; the ovary is composed of separate or united carpels, each containing 1 ovule. The fruit is a berry, containing few or many seeds. Phytolacca, rivinoides (like Rivina, a related genus) may become 5 meters long. Its elliptic or broadly lance-shaped, pointed leaves are from 6 to 18 centimeters long, their stalks from 2 to about 6 centimeters long. The flower-clusters are from 20 to 50 centimeters long, the stalked, individual flowers are not very close together; the sepals are rounded and about 2 millimeters long; there are from 10 to 20 stamens and about as many carpels. The berries are about 6 millimeters in diameter, borne on stalks from 6 to 10 millimeters long. Another species, Phytolacca icosandras has been recorded as found once, long ago, in Porto Rico. This is an upright, stout, herb, from 1 to 3 meters high, with much shorter-stalked flowers and berries, widely distributed in tropical America.