Citharexylum fruticosum L.

• Title

  Citharexylum fruticosum L.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Citharexylum fruticosum L.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Citharexylum fruticosum Pendula Fiddle-wood Family Verbenaceae Vervain Family Citharexylum fruticosum Linnaeus, Systema Naturae, edition 10, 1115. 1759. Citharexylum Cinereum Linnaeus, Species Plantarum, edition 2, 872. 1763. Citharexylum villosum Jacquin, Icones Rariorum 1: 12. 1786. Citharexylum subserratum Swartz, Prodromus Descriptionum Vegetabilium 91. 1788. Of especial interest because of great diversity in form and size of its leaves, and amount, or lack of pubescence, this West Indian tree has received several botanical names, on the supposition that the specimens studied by botanists represented as many different species, a conclusion modified after the flowers and fruit were ascertained to be essentially alike in all. It is distributed from Florida and the Bahamas southward to Guadeloupe and Dominica. In Porto Rico the tree grows at lower and middle altitudes in both wet and dry districts, its foliage usually nearly or quite smooth in districts with high rainfall, but usually hairy, often densely so, in dry districts. It is thus an exception to the more general condition that trees inhabiting wet districts do not thrive in dry climates, and conversely. Experimental germination of the seeds from smooth and from hairy trees, to ascertain if seedlings would come true to parentage would be instructive. The hard, red wood is used for furniture and in construction. Citharexylum (Greek, fiddle-wood; French, bois fidèle) is a Linnaean genus of about 20 species of trees or shrubs, natives of tropical and subtropical America. They have broad, opposite leaves, mostly without teeth, but those of young shoots may sometimes be coarsely toothed, and appear to be alternate, in our species. Their small flowers are borne in long, slender, clusters; the bell-shaped calyx has 5, minute teeth; the salverform corolla is 5-lobed; the 4 or 5 stamens are borne on the corolla-tube, the 5th one usually sterile, or rudimentary; the ovary is incompletely 4-celled, with 1 ovule in each cavity, and the style is 2-lobed. The fruits resemble berries, having fleshy pulp, and a bony stone which ultimately separates into 2 nutlets (pyrenes), each 2-seeded. Citharexylum fruticosum (shrubby, but it is usually a tree) may reach 10 meters in height with a trunk about 20 centimeters in diameter, the light brown bark separating in long strips. The leaves vary from oblong to obovate and from 5 to 15 centimeters in length, either pointed or blunt; they are densely netted-veined, with stalks 2.5 centimeters long, or shorter. The slender flower-clusters are from 5 to 12 centimeters long, the individual flowers on stalks only about 1 millimeter long; the calyx is about 3 millimeters long, the white corolla about 6 millimeters broad. The nearly globular, reddish-brown to black fruits are from 6 to 10 millimeters in diameter. Another species, Citharexylum caudatum, inhabits mountain forests in Porto Rico, and grows also in the Bahamas, Jamaica, Cuba, Santo Domingo, Haiti, and in Mexico; it has longer-stalked flowers and its leaves are coarsely netted-veined.