from the November 22, 2009 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
"WILD CRAPE-MYRTLE"
If you're familiar with the North's Crape-Myrtle, whose pink, frilly-petaled blossoms are shown at http://www.backyardnature.net/n/w/crape-my.htm you'd have no problem with the name "Wild Crape-Myrtle" for the small, flowering tree shown above.

Despite all the similarities between the flowers in the picture and flowers of the northern Crape-Myrtle, the two plants belong to different families. Our currently flowering little tree is best known in English literature as Barbados-Cherry, though it's not in the cherry's family either; sometimes it's also called Acerola. It's MALPIGHIA GLABRA, a member of the tropical and subtropical Malpighia Family, the Malpighiaceae. In most of North America there are no wild members of the Malpighia Family.

Members of the Malpighia Family are woody with simple, usually opposite leaves. Flowers typically have five sepals, five petals, and the petals are usually slightly different in size, fringed or toothed, and somewhat spatula-shaped -- narrowing at the base into a slender "stem" or claw. Stamens or sterile, stamen- like "staminodia" usually number ten. A blossom close- up of our plant showing these features is below:

The most distinguishing feature, though, is what appears in the above photo between the petals' claws. Especially in the bottom, left corner of the picture, do you see those two cream-colored bumps between the two petals' claws? A close-up side-view of the bumps is shown below:

Each of those egg-shaped items is a gland, two to a sepal, the sepal being one of a calyx's five triangular or toothlike divisions, the calyx being the greenish "cup" subtending the other flower parts. In this picture the glands completely obscure the calyx. More typically, on other species, the glands look like two small warts at the base of each sepal. Whatever the size or shape of these glands, when you see two of them at the base of each of a flower's sepals, just think "Malpighia Family." It's unusual to have such a dependable field mark for recognizing plant families, so if you like identifying tropical plants, this is a trick worth keeping in mind. I'm not sure what the glands are for. Often glands secrete substances that attract or repel insects.

Often you see Barbados-Cherries growing around traditional Maya houses because the trees produce a thin-skinned, acid fruit that's good to eat. The fruit contains 32 times more Vitamin C than a similar quantity of orange juice. When eleven fruit pulps were tested, that of Barbados-Cherry scored the highest anti-oxidant potency.

No fruits are available here now, though, just the pretty blossoms on somewhat spindly, 10-ft-tall trees spread somewhat evenly and commonly throughout the forest understory all around us.

Barbados-Cherries grow from southern Texas through our area all the way to northern South America.

from the May 16, 2010 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins, central Yucatán, MÉXICO
BARBADOS CHERRIES RIPE
Nowadays the Barbados Cherries are heavy with crimson fruits, looking very much like 15-ft-tall crabapples up North. Even the trees' leaves, much-branching stems and flaky trunk look like those of crabapple. You can see a handsome branch of them below:

Earlier when we looked at the flowers we made much ado about the large, yellow pairs of glands attached to the back of each flower's sepal. Brown, dried-up, gland-bearing sepals still subtend the current drupes, as shown below: