Plinia
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Authority
Maguire, Bassett. 1969. The botany of the Guayana Highland-part VIII. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 18: 1-290.
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Family
Myrtaceae
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Scientific Name
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Description
Genus Description - Buds completely closed or nearly so, the tips of the calyx-lobes sometimes free, approximate in pairs and appressed to the tip of the bud; hypanthium much prolonged beyond the summit of the ovary, the stamens borne at the summit of a funnelform tube; buds opening irregularly, the calyx and hypanthium splitting longitudinally; flowers appressed-hispidulous or -silky, in sessile or nearly sessile, persistently involucrate clusters; ovules 2(-4) in each of two locules; cotyledons free, planoconvex. Berg seems not to have realized the myrtaceous afflnities of the original species of Plinia, P pinnata L., although he knew the plant in question. H e described it under two different names in as many genera, but apparently never assigned it to a genus of its own. It remained for Urban (Repert. Sp. Nov. 15: 412, 413. 1919) to point out that Plinia was an independent genus. Urban subsequently described a number of additional species from the West Indies, and in the last two decades several new species have been described from South America and one from Costa Rica.