Roseta

Guettarda pungens Urban, Symb. Ant. 1: 434. 1899
A stiff shrub 3-3.5 meters high, the branches brown or grayish, the branchlets very stout, densely leafy, scaberulous; stipules deltoid-acuminate, 2.5-3 mm. long, scaberulous, deciduous; leaves opposite, the petioles very stout, 1—4 mm. long, scaberulous; leaf-blades broadly ovate to obovate or elliptic, 1-3.2 cm. long, 0.5-2 cm. wide, acute or acuminate and rigidly pungentmucronate, rounded to acutish at the base, rigid-coriaceous, lustrous, green and glabrous above, the costa subimpressed, the other venation very irregular, scarcely prominulous, paler beneath and often brownish, sparsely and minutely appressed-pilose or glabrate, the costa very prominent, the lateral nerves prominulous, 7 or 8 on each side, straight, ascending at a wide angle, the veins obscurely reticulate, the margin plane or recurved ; flowers solitary, axillary, the peduncles 1.5-2 mm. long, the bractlets coalescent, the lobes linear-subulate; calyx and hypanthium tomentulose, the hypanthium 1-1.5 mm. long, the calyx 2.5 mm. long, obscurely bilobate; corolla-tube 13 mm. long, densely retrorse-pilose outside, whitish-pubescent within except at the base, the 5 or 6 lobes obovate, one third as long as the tube; anthers 2-2.5 mm. long; style minutely pilose; ovary 4or 5-celled; fruit globose, 6-7 mm. in diameter, minutely pilosulous.
Type locality: Pine woods, Valle de Constanza, Santo Domingo, altitude 1170 meters. Distribution: Dry hillsides, Porto Rico and Hispaniola.