Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter

PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS, leaves and fruits

from the January 29, 2012 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins; limestone bedrock; elevation ~39m (~128ft), N20.675°, W88.569°; central Yucatán state, MÉXICO
PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS
After over two years of being here, not over a hundred yards (meters) from the hut, a tree species has turned up that's new to me, an exciting discovery. It's about 12 feet tall (3.7m) and is fruiting. You can see the tree's three-parted, drupe-type fruits and broad leaves that are much lighter below than above at the top of this page.

A fruit displaying its thin, dry and fairly hard husk is shown below:

PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS fruit showing thin husk

The brittle, dry drupe is divided into three hollow compartments, or carpels. In each carpel two dry seeds hang suspended in otherwise empty chambers as shown below:

PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS, fruit open to show pendulous seed
*UPDATE: Since 2012, many new identification resources have become available on the Internet, especially the iNaturalist.org website. When this page's photos were uploaded to iNaturalist as Garcia nutans, at first a specialist in the Mexican flora agreed. However, in mid 2025, an expert in the Euphorbia Family to which Garcia nutans belongs, iNaturalist user "vicsteinmann," recognized our tree as PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS, a member of the closely related Leaf-flower Family, the Phyllanthaceae, with no English name. Seeing this, the former expert agreed with "vicsteinmann," and so did I. On iNaturalist, in 2025, the species has been observed only in Mexico's eastern tropical lowlands, and Guatemala. This is a good example of how gradually iNaturalist and other websites are helping us better grasp what little-collected species look like, and where they are.

Three lobed fruit suggested that the tree belonged to the Spurge or Poinsettia Family, the Euphorbiaceae. On the Internet when I searched for Mexican tree species in that family, the leaves and unusual fruits matched those of Garcia nutans*, a little known tree seldom noted, but found from the central and southern lowlands of Mexico and the Caribbean islands south to Columbia in northern South America.

What a buzz to find something so rare and interesting -- and so close to my own front door!

entry from field notes dated October 7, 2022, taken about 3kms north of Gómez Farías, on the lower eastern slope of the Eastern Sierra Madres, El Cielo Biosphere Reserve, southern Tamaulipas state, MÉXICO; elevation about 300m (1000 ft), ± LAT. 23.04°N, LONG. -99.15°W
PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS IN EAST-CENTRAL MEXICO

PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS, fruit on tree

Along the steeply inclined, deeply rutted gravel road approaching the bottom of Cañón el Azteca, Aztec Canyon, about 3 kms north of the village of Gómez Farías, the above fruit at the tip of a branch of a 7m-tall tree (25ft) leaning from the forest edge surprised me...

*UPDATE: Since 2022, many new identification resources have become available on the Internet. At first I thought this was Garcia nutans, of the Euphorbia Family, but in 2025 when this page's photos were uploaded to the iNaturalist website, the fruits better matched those of PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS, with no English name.

Here's the hairless or nearly hairless undersurface of an aged leaf:

PHYLLANTHUS GRANDIFOLIUS, glabrous leaf undersurface