Cupania triquetra A. Rich.

• Title

  Cupania triquetra A. Rich.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Cupania triquetra A.Rich.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Cupania triquetra Guará Cupania Family Sapindaceae Soapberry Family Cupania triquetra A. Richard, in Sagra, Historia de la Isla de Cuba 10: 119, 1845. A pinnate-leaved tree, with large terminal clusters of small, greenish flowers, frequent in woodlands, on hillsides and plains in moist parts of Porto Rico, at lower and middle elevations, growing also in Santo Domingo, the Virgin Islands, Guadaloupe and Martinique. Its wood is brownish and soft. Cupania is a Linnaean genus, with about 30 species of tropical American trees, the name given to commemorate Francis Cupani, a Sicilian physician and botanist, who lived from 1657 to 1710. Their alternate leaves are stalked, and have few or several alternate leaflets, more or less toothed. The regular, imperfect flowers are numerous in the clusters; there are 4 or 5 overlapping sepals; the 5 petals are accompanied by 2 scales; there are 8 short stamens; the pistillate flowers have a 3-celled ovary and a short style. The fruit is a 3-angled or 3-lobed capsule, splitting when mature, releasing the arillate seeds. Cupania triquetra (three-angled, referring to the fruit) reaches maximum height of about 20 meters, with nearly smooth bark. Its twigs, leaf-stalks and flower-clusters are densely short-hairy. The leaves are about 30 centimeters long or shorter; the leaflets from 4 to 8, ovary from oblong to obovate, and from 6 to 12 centimeters in length; they are short-stalked, usually wavy-margined, rounded at the apex, narrowed to the base, the upper side smooth, or nearly so, the under surface hairy. The flower-clusters are about as long as the leaves, or longer, the very many, individual white flowers about 3 millimeters broad. The fruit is top-shaped, stalked, sharply 3-angled, finely hairy, about 15 millimeters broad. Another species, Cupania americana Linnaeus, with nearly globular, bluntly lobed fruit, also occurs in Porto Rico.