Crescentia amazonica Ducke

  • Authority

    Gentry, Alwyn H. 1980. Bignoniaceae--Part 1. (Crescentieae and Tourrettieae). Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 25: 1-130. (Published by NYBG Press)

  • Family

    Bignoniaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Crescentia amazonica Ducke

  • Type

    Type. Brazil. Amazonas: Borba, Rio Madeira, Ducke s.n. (RB 34697) (holotype, RB; isotypes, K, MO, US).

  • Description

    Species Description - Small tree to 10 m; branchlets mostly lacking, smaller branches thick, subterete, with alternate short-shoot projections each bearing a fascicle of leaves from its center; leaves of various sizes in each fascicle, simple, oblanceolate to narrowly obovate, acute, attenuate at base, 5-22 cm long, 1-5.3 cm wide, petiole merging gradually into leaf base, scattered lepidote, otherwise glabrous or with a few scattered trichomes along midvein. Inflorescence of one or two flowers, cauliflorous. Flowers indistinguishable from those of C. cujete. Fruit a calabash, subspherical to oblong-ellipsoid, 4-4.5 cm diam., 5.5-7(-8 cm fide Aristeguieta 5808) long, the shell smooth, thin, hard; seeds small, thin, wingless, scattered through pulp of the fruit.

  • Discussion

    This species of the seasonally inundated varzea and tahuampa forests may prove no more than a small-fruited wild form of widely cultivated C. cujete. Its fruits are constantly significantly smaller than those of cultivated C. cujete but such a change might be expected in naturalized populations of C. cujete if artificial selection for the large fruits suitable for containers were relaxed. Biogeographically C. amazonica is a bit improbable—all other Crescentieae are found in Central America and the West Indies (three of these also reaching northwest South America). Crescentia amazonica is mentioned by the earliest European explorers so the introduction of its ancestors, if not natural, was at least pre-Colombian.

  • Common Names

    tapara montanera, totumo, taparo de agua, tapara, cuia pequena do igapo, cuia maraca, cuiupi, cuia pequena

  • Distribution

    Along the upper and middle Amazon and Orinoco and their major tributaries in seasonally inundated varzea.

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