Melochia nodiflora Sw.

• Title

  Melochia nodiflora Sw.

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Melochia nodiflora Sw.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Melochia nodiflora Bretonica prieta Nodal-flowered Melochia Family Sterculiaceae Chocolate Family Melochia nodiflora Swartz, Prodromus Descriptionum Vegetabilium 97.1788. A shrubby plant, with small, nearly stalkless, white or rose-colored flowers, densely clustered at the leaf-axils. It is frequent in Porto Rico, at lower and middle elevations, growing on banks, and hillsides, and in thickets, also on the islands Vieques and Culebra. The plant is distributed nearly throughout the West Indies and continental tropical America. It is the only species of its genus in Porto Rico. Melochia is an Arabic name, used by the botanist Dillen, Professor in Oxford University, in 1732, and, subsequently established as a genus by Linnaeus, as here understood comprises some 25 species of herbs and shrubs, tropical in distribution. They have alternate, stalked, toothed leaves, and variously clustered flowers. There are 5 sepals, or calyx-lobes, and 5 petals; the 5 stamens, opposite the petals, are more or less united by their filaments; the ovary is 5-celled, with 2 ovules in each cavity; the 5 styles are separate, or slightly united at the base. The small fruit is 5-divided. Melochia nodiflora may become a shrub about 2 meters high, usually lower, with slender, ascending branches, and sparingly hairy twigs. The thin, ovate, toothed, pointed leaves are from 3 to 10 centimeters long, smooth,or nearly so, their slender, hairy stalks from 1 to 3 centimeters long. The flowers are several or many together in subglobose clusters; the triangular-lanceolate calyx-lobes are 2 or 3 millimeters long, the rose-colored petals a little longer; the filaments of the stamens are united; the 5 styles are separate. The young fruit is deeply 5-lobed, when mature separating into 5 carpels about 3 millimeters long.