Ixora ferrea (Jacq.) Benth.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. Flora Borinqueña.

• Family

  Rubiaceae

• Scientific Name

  Ixora ferrea (Jacq.) Benth.

• Description

  
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  Species Description - The names of this small tree all refer to the very hard wood, which is dark brown, strong, heavy, and tough. It is frequent in Porto Rico woodlands and forests, in wet or moist districts, ranging from sea-level to 900 meters elevation, or higher, grows also in Cuba, in the Virgin Islands, in the Lesser Antilles from St. Kitts to Grenada, and recorded on the continent from Central America and northern South America. As the nearest relative to coffee in the native flora of the West Indies, this tree is of especial interest; the leaves are much like those of coffee, as also the berries, but the flowers differ in having a toothed calyx, and otherwise. Palo de dajao is another Spanish name. Ixora (Malabar name), is a Linnaean genus of more than 100 species of trees and shrubs, most of them natives of the Old World tropics, the type species being the East Indian Ixora coccinea, frequently cultivated for its showy, scarlet f lowers, and known as Cruzde Malta, and Burning Love. They have opposite leaves, and clustered flowers. The calyx is short, 4-toothed, or 5-toothed; the corolla has a slender, nearly cylindric tube, and a 4-toothed or 5-lobed limb, the lobes contorted; the 4 or 5, very short stamens are borne on the corolla; the 2-celled ovary has 1 ovule in each cavity, and the style is slender. The fruit is a 2-seeded berry. Ixora ferrea (iron-like) may become 10 meters high, but is usually smaller, and often shrubby. The smooth, pointed leaves are oblong, or elliptic, short-stalked, rather firm in texture, from 8 to 20 centimeters long, and rather faintly veined. The white or reddish flowers are in small, stalkless, 3-forked clusters on the twigs; the calyx is about 2 millimeters long, with 4, pointed teeth; the slender tube of the corolla is 10 or 12 millimeters long, much longer than the 4-lobed limb. The berries are black, nearly globular, about 10 millimeters in diameter.

• Discussion

  Palo de hierro Iron-wood Madder Family Sideroxyloides ferreum Jacquin, Selectarum Stirpium Americanum 10. 1763. Ixora ferrea Bentham, Linnaea 23: 447. 1850.