2. RAPANEA Aubl.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juices and terete branchlets. Leaves alternate, entire or rarely dentate, usually distinctly lepidote, persistent, without stipules. Flowers perfect or unisexual by abortion, minute, 4 or 5, or rarely 6 or 7-merous, sessile or pedicellate, in small axillary sessile or pedunculate fascicles, their bracts deciduous; calyx free, persistent, the sepals imbricate-valvate in the bud, ciliate, usually glandular-punctate; corolla hypogynous, the lobes more or less connate at base, ovate or elliptic, spreading or recurved, glandular-punctate, papillate on the margins, imbricate or rarely convolute in the bud; stamens inserted on the base of the corolla opposite its lobes; filaments 0; anthers short, connate to the corolla, acuminate and papillate at apex, introrse, 2-celled, the cells opening longitudinally; ovary globose or ellipsoidal, 1-celled; stigma capitate, irregularly lobed; ovules few, peltate, immersed in one series near the middle of the free fleshy globose placenta. Fruit dry or fleshy, seed filling the cavity of the fruit, globose, intruded at base; testa thin; albumen copious, corneous, rarely slightly ruminate; embryo cylindric, elongated, transverse, usually curved; cotyledons small, radicle elongated.
Rapanea, with nearly one hundred and fifty species, is widely distributed through the tropical and subtropical regions of the two hemispheres, one species reaching southern Florida.
The generic name is formed from the native name of Rapanea guianensis in British Guiana.
1. [Rapanea guianensis] Aubl.
Leaves crowded at the end of the branches, oblong-obovate, obtuse or retuse at apex, gradually narrowed and contracted at base, coriaceous, bright green and lustrous on the upper surface, paler on the lower surface, 2¾′—3½′ long and 1′—1½′ wide, with thickened revolute margins, a thick midrib and obscure veins; petioles stout, narrowly wing-margined, ¼′—⅓′ in length. Flowers in November, minute, short-pedicellate in short pedunculate clusters usually 5, rarely 4-merous, white more or less marked with purple, about ⅙′ in diameter; calyx divided to the middle, the lobes broad-ovate, acute or rounded at apex, slightly ciliate, persistent under the fruit; corolla 2 or 3 times longer than the calyx, the lobes spreading, narrowed and rounded at apex, slightly ciliate on the margins; staminate flowers dimorphous; anthers sagittate-apiculate, inserted below the middle of the petals; ovary in one form crowned by a minute discoid sessile stigma and probably abortive, in the other form gradually narrowed into a slender style, terminating in an oblique stigma and fertile; pistillate flowers, anthers smaller and rudimentary; ovary crowned by a large nearly sessile irregularly lobed papillate stigma deciduous from the fruit. Fruit in clusters crowded on the elongated somewhat thickened spur-like peduncle of the flower-cluster covered with imbricated persistent bracts, dark blue or nearly black, tipped with the persistent style, ⅙′—⅕′ in diameter; exocarp thin and fleshy; endocarp crustaceous, white.
A tree, in Florida occasionally 18°—20° high, with a tall usually more or less crooked trunk 2′—3′ in diameter, small ascending branches forming an open irregular head, and slender gray or light red-brown branchlets roughened for a year or two by the persistent spur-like peduncles of the fallen fruit and later marked by circular scars in the axils of the small transverse leaf-scars; more often a shrub. Bark of the trunk thin, close, pale gray.
Distribution. Florida, shores of Indian River on the east coast and Palmetto, Manatee County, on the west coast, southward to the southern keys; common; on the Bahama Islands, Cuba, Porto Rico, Jamaica and Trinidad, to southern Brazil, and to Mexico and Bolivia.