Persicaria punctata Small

• Title

  Persicaria punctata Small

• Authors

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Persicaria punctata (Elliott) Small

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Persicaria punctata Yerba de hicotea Smartweed Family Polygonaceae Buckwheat Family Polygonum punctatum Elliott, Botany of South Carolina and Georgia 1: 455. 1817. Persicaria punctata Small, Flora of the Southeastern United States 370. 1903. Some kinds of herbaceous plants inhabiting fresh-water marshes or ponds are naturally distributed through both tropical and temperate regions, thus living both within and without climates subject to winter frost. The species here illustrated, growing in such situations, frequent at lower and middle altitudes in Porto Rico, and nearly throughout tropical America, ranges northward, through the continental United States, to Maine, Michigan and California. Persicaria (from the resemblance of the leaves of some species to those of Persica, the peach) is a genus first established botanically by the English botanist Philip Miller, in the now exceedingly rare abridged edition of his Gardeners Dictionary, published in 1754; about 125 species are known. They are herbs, with alternate, untoothed leaves, which have cylindric sheaths (ochreae), and small, short-stalked flowers in slender clusters, their stalks jointed at the base of the calyx, which usually consists of 5 sepals; there are no petals; the stamens are from 4 to 8; the 1-celled ovary contains 1 ovule; the 2, or sometimes 3 styles are usually partly united, topped by small, round stigmas. The fruit is lenticular, or sometimes 3-angled, small, hard, usually black, 1-seeded (achene). Persicaria punctata (the leaves are punctate with pellucid dots) is smooth, or nearly so, usually upright and from 0.3 to 0.8 meter high, or sometimes higher. The thin, lance-shaped, long-pointed leaves are acrid in taste, from 3 to 20 centimeters long, plentifully pellucid-punctate, as seen through a magnifying glass; their sheaths are fringed by long, weak bristles which fall away. The flower-clusters are from 2 to 8 centimeters long; the sepals are greenish-white, and there are 8 stamens; the 2 or 3 styles are united near the base. The oblong, lenticular, or 3-sided achenes are smooth, shining, about 2.5 millimeters long. There are 3 other species of Persicaria in the Porto Rico Flora.