| Dicotyledon | Literature for Cestrum nocturnum
Wagner et al., 1990, 1999. |
| Solanaceae -- The Nightshade Family | Bibliography |
| Cestrum nocturnum | |
Common name(s): `ala aumoe, kupaoa, night cestrum, onaona Iapana |
| General Information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Native to the Antilles and Central America, widely cultivated for its strongly night-scented flowers and naturalized throughout the tropics.In the Hawaiian Islands, naturalized on Kaua`i, O`ahu, Lana`i, Maui, Hawai`i. | |
| Habit |
Shrubs or small trees 2-4 m tall; branches somewhat flexuous, sparsely pubescent with crisped, simple hairs and a few minute glandular hairs. |
|
| Leaves |
Leaves lanceolate-elliptic, often 10 cm long, 4 cm wide, apex acuminate, base rounded or broadly cuneate, petioles 10-15 mm long. |
|
| Flowers |
Flowers in spicate, often congested racemes, forming terminal leafy panicles; calyx campanulate, ca. 2.5 mm long, upper 1/3 divided into triangular lobes; corolla vespertine, strongly sweet-scented by night, greenish yellow, tubular, slender, slightly enlarged toward apex; stamens 5, inserted high in corolla tube; filaments with an erect process projecting below point of insertion, 3 mm long; anthers 0.5 mm long; ovary with an annular disk; style 1, 15-16 mm long; stigma shortly bifid, exceeding anthers. |
|
| Fruit |
Berries white, hard or juicy, 8-10 mm in diameter. |
|
| Seeds |
Seeds few, prismatic, outer face convex, inner faces concave, hilum scar elliptic, minutely reticulate. |
|
| Chromosomes |
2n = 16 |
|
| Notes |
Self-compatible |
|
