Duranta repens L.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Verbenaceae

• Scientific Name

  Duranta repens L.

• Description

  
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  Species Description - The Spanish popular names Lila (Lilac), and Cuentas de oro (Golden beads) are also used for this attractive shrub or small tree, with nodding clusters of lilac flowers and yellow fruits, commonly planted for ornament, and widely distributed, naturally, nearly throughout tropical America, north to Florida and to Bermuda. The English equivalent of Lluvia is shower. In Porto Rico it grows on hillsides and in thickets at lower and middle elevations, most plentiful in relatively dry districts, ascending to about 500 meters elevation, but often planted at much higher altitudes, and also on the small islands Vieques, Cayo Muertos and Desecheo. It is the type species of its genus and the only one inhabiting Porto Rico. Duranta (named in honor of Castor Durante, a physician of Rome), includes about 6 species of shrubs, or small trees, natives of tropical and subtropical America, their branches sometimes armed with spines, their leaves opposite, or more than 2 together. The small flowers form slender, often long clusters; the calyx is without teeth, or slightly toothed; the salverform, or funnelform corolla has a cylindric tube, and a spreading, 5-lobed limb; there are 4, short stamens, in 2 pairs; the ovary is partially 8-celled, with 1 or 2 ovules in each, incomplete cavity, the style simple. The small, fleshy fruit, enclosed by the enlarged, persistent calyx, contains 4, 1-seeded nutlets. Duranta repens (creeping, but the name is not definitive) is a shrub from 1 to 3 meters high, rarely a small tree about 6 meters high, or lower, with slender, long, often drooping or trailing branches, unarmed or spiny, smooth or hairy, rather densely leafy. The few-toothed, or untoothed, thin, nearly blunt leaves are various in form, from ovate to elliptic or obovate, short-stalked, from 1.5 to 5 centimeters long. The flower-clusters are from 5 to 15 centimeters long, the individual flowers with stalks from 1 to 5 millimeters long; the angled calyx is at first 3 or 4 millimeters long, but enlarges, and its 5, sharp teeth are shorter than its tube; the lilac corolla has a tube somewhat longer than the calyx, its limb from 7 to 9 millimeters broad. The nearly globular, yellow fruit, from 7 to 11 millimeters in diameter, is enclosed by the accrescent calyx, which is prolonged, above it, into a curved beak.

• Discussion

  Lluvia Pigeon-berry Vervain Family Duranta repens Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 637. 1753. Duranta Ellisia Jacquin, Enumeratio Systematica Plantarum 26. 1760.