| Dicotyledon | Literature for Eugenia uniflora
Morton, 1987; Smith, 1985; Lorence & Wagner, 2020. |
| Myrtaceae -- The Myrtle Family | Bibliography |
| Eugenia uniflora | |
Common name(s): pitanga, Surinam cherry |
| General Information | ||
|---|---|---|
| Distribution | Native to South America, from Surinam, Guyana, and French Guiana to Brazil and Uruguay. Cultivated for its edible fruit and now naturalized in many tropical areas.In the Hawaiian Islands, naturalized on Kaua`i, O`ahu, Moloka`i, Lana`i, Maui. |
|
| Habit |
Shrub or tree to 7.5 m tall, resinously aromatic, branches slender, spreading; branchlets glabrous, the bark peeling. |
|
| Leaves |
Leaves bronze green when young, deep green and glossy when mature, glabrous, short-petiolate; blade ovate to ovate-lanceolate, 2.5‒7.5 cm long, 1.5‒4 cm wide, apex short-acuminate, the tip blunt to sharp, base acute to obtuse or rounded, chartaceous to subcoriaceous, secondary veins 4‒8 on each side, higher order venation prominulous, margin entire, both surfaces minutely gland-dotted; petiole 1‒2 mm long. |
|
| Flowers |
Inflorescences solitary or up to 4-flowered in the leaf axils, pedicel slender, 7‒40 mm long, 0.2‒0.3 mm in diameter (0.4‒0.5 mm in diameter in fruit), glabrous; bracts 1‒1.5 mm long, puberulent, persistent. Flowers with obvoid hypanthium, 1‒2 mm long, 0.8‒1 mm in diameter, sparsely puberulent to glabrate; calyx deeply 4-lobed, lobes 3‒5 mm long, 1‒3 mm wide, ovate-elliptic to oblong, recurved, inserted on the annular nectary disc, gland-dotted, ciliate, persistent; petals white, obovate-elliptic, cucullate, 7‒9 mm long, 5‒6 mm wide, apex obtuse, margin puberulent, stamens 50‒60, inserted on nectary disc, white, filaments 3‒7 mm long, anthers 0.5 mm long; style 7‒8 mm long, stigma entire. |
|
| Fruit |
Fruit oblate or subglobose, conspicuously (7)8-ribbed, 1.5‒2 cm long, 2‒4 cm in diameter, ripening red or dark purple, pericarp thick, juicy, 1(‒3)-seeded. |
|
| Seeds |
Seed whitish when fresh, drying blackish, subglobose-ellipsoid, 10‒14 mm long, 8‒10 mm wide, 6‒7 mm thick, seed coat loosely coherent to pericarp and cotyledons. |
|
| Chromosomes |
2n = 22, 33. |
|
| Contributor |
David Lorence |