Bonellia macrocarpa

Common Name: Cudjoewood

Family: Theophrastaceae

Common Synonyms: Jacquinia macrocarpa, Jacquinia racemosa

USDA Hardiness Zone: 10b-11

Growth Habit: Tree or shrub

Origin: Caribbean, Mexico

FISC Category: -

FDACS Listed Noxious Weed: No

Introduction Date: Earliest Florida specimen vouchered in 1995

IFAS Assessment:

  • North: OK
  • Central: OK
  • South: OK
Bonellia macrocarpa
Flowers of Jacquinia macrocarpa, by Jayesh Patilhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/54439360@N04/5542606377/Used under Creative Commons 2.0 license

Description

Shrubs or trees to 4 m tall, twigs puberulous-lepidote when young, glabrescent. Stems gray, smooth. Leaves usually alternate, petiole to 6 mm, sparsely puberulent adaxially, blade usually elliptic, sometimes lanceolate or oblanceolate, 3-6 cm by 1-2 cm. Racemes to 3 cm long. Pedicels ca. 1 mm, bracts lanceolate, 3-7 mm. Flowers with sepals 3-4 mm, margins entire or slightly erose, corolla lobes ovate to suborbiculate, 6-9 mm, stamens shorter than staminodes, staminodes suborbiculate, apex slightly 3-lobed. Berries 3-4 cm in diameter, pericarp wrinkled. Seeds ca. 1 cm. Flowering year-round.

Habitat

Disturbed areas

Comments

Grows in tropical climates in a range of environmental conditions, seeds dispersed by birds and other frugivorous animals. Subspecies macrocarpa is cultivated in Cuba and Florida, where it has escaped. A component of thorn scrub in its native habit, it has escaped into spoil deposits and fringes of mangrove forests in Miami-Dade County. The similar state threatened species, Jacquinia keyensis, also occurs in the keys.

Map of species distribution

Control Methods

  • Manual: Mechanical: Pulling seedlings by hand
  • Chemical: Cut-stump method of herbicide application using 50% triclopyr diluted in water
  • Biological: NA

Control Notes

NA

References

Dave's Garden. 2014. PlantFiles: Cudjoe-wood, Bonellia macrocarpa. http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/207730/. Accessed on June 20, 2014.

PlantPono. 2014. Jacquinia, knock-me-back (Bonellia macrocarpa). http://www.plantpono.org/hpwra-plant.php?id=1507. Accessed on June 27, 2014.

Wunderlin, R. P., and B. F. Hansen. 2008. Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants (http://florida.plantatlas.usf.edu/).[S. M. Landry and K. N. Campbell (application development), Florida Center for Community Design and Research.] Institute for Systematic Botany, University of South Florida, Tampa.

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