Prestonia agglutinata (Jacq.) Woodson

• Title

  Prestonia agglutinata (Jacq.) Woodson

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Prestonia agglutinata (Jacq.) Woodson

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Prestonia agglutinata Babiero Family Apocynaceae Dogbane Family Echites agglutinata Jacquin, Enumeratio Systematica Plantarum 13.1760. Echites circinalis Swartz, Prodromus Flora India Occidentalis 52.1788. Prestonia agglutinata Woodson, Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 18: 552. 1932. A smooth, twining vine, frequent, or occasional in thickets at lower and middle elevations in Porto Rico, most plentiful in the dry districts, and found also on the island Mona. It is distributed westward into Santo Domingo and eastward through the Virgin Islands. The broad leaves are opposite, the nearly white flowers clustered, rather inconspicuous, the long, slender, paired pods interesting. Prestonia, a genus dedicated to Doctor Charles Preston, Professor in Edinburgh, who died in 1711, established by Robert Browne in 1809, has numerous species of somewhat woody, twining vines, natives of tropical and subtropical America. They have opposite, stalked, untoothed leaves, and rather small flowers in clusters. The calyx is 5-lobed; the salverform corolla has a cylindric, swollen tube, and 5 spreading lobes; there are 5, short stamens, with appendaged anthers attached to the stigma; the ovary consists of 2 carpels. The fruit is a pair of many-seeded follicles. Prestonia agglutinata (glued, the follicles are coherent at the apex when young) may become 7 meters, long, or longer, its ovate to nearly orbicular, short-pointed leaves are from 4 to 10 centimeters long, with stalks about 2 centimeters long, or shorter. The flowers are few or several together on a stalk about a long as the leaves, or shorter, the individual ones short-stalked; the calyx has pointed, ovate lobes; the greenish corolla has a tube about 6 millimeters long, with lobes nearly as long. The slender follicles are from 10 to 17 centimeters long. This is the only species of Prestonia known to inhabit Porto Rico. No English popular name for it has been recorded. Long regarded as a species of Echites, recent studies require its transferral to Prestonia.