Serjania polyphylla (L.) Radlk.

• Title

  Serjania polyphylla (L.) Radlk.

• Author(s)

  Nathaniel Lord Britton, Frances W. Horne

• Scientific Name

  Serjania polyphylla Radlk.

• Description

  Flora Borinqueña Serjania polyphylla Bejuco de corrales Basket Wood Family Sapindaceae Soapberry Family Paullinia polyphylla Linnaeus, Species Plantarum 366. 1753. Paullinia triternata Jacquin, Selectarum Stirpium Americanarum 110.1763. Serjania triternata Willdenow, Species Plantarum 2: 466. 1799. Serjania polyphylla Radlkofer, Monographie der Sapindaceen Gattung Serjania 179. 1875. The wood of this long vine is much used in the fabrication of baskets, locally the basis of considerable industry. Bejuco de costilla is another Spanish name, and Black Withe an English one. The vine is common in Porto Rico at lower and middle elevations in moist and wet districts, ascending to about 500 meters elevation, and also inhabits the small islands Vieques, Cayo Muertos and Cayo Icacos; it ranges eastward through all the Virgin Islands, and westward into Santo Domingo and Haiti. Profuse clusters of small, white flowers make it conspicuous and attractive. Serjania, a name first used by the French botanist Plumier, commemorating Paul Sergeant, otherwise unrecorded, is a large genus of woody vines, about 175 species having been distinguished by the German botanist Radlkofer, who diligently studied the Soapberry Family during a long lifetime. They are all natives of tropical and subtropical America, with alternate, mostly decompound leaves, and axillary clusters of more or less imperfect flowers, which often bear tendrils. There are 5, overlapping sepals, 4 petals with small scales between them, and 8 stamens; the 3-celled ovary has 1 ovule in each cell, the 3 styles are partly united, the stigmas 3. The curious fruit is 3-winged, consisting of 3 samaras, attached by their backs, each containing 1 seed near the apex. Serjania polyphylla (many leaflets) is a woody vine, sometimes high-climbing, and attaining a length of about 10 meters, but usually shorter. The several, or many, pointed, or blunt, smooth leaflets are ovate, or elliptic, finely netted-veined, firm in texture, about 6 centimeters long, or shorter, the upper side shining, the under side dull. The densely and finely whitish-hairy flower-clusters are commonly longer than the leaves, the numerous individual flowers on stalks from 2 to 5 millimeters long; the white, obovate petals are about 5 millimeters long. The broadly ovate fruit is from 1.5 to 2.5 centimeters long, the wing of the samara not enclosing the seed. Professor Radlkofer recorded another species, Serjania diversifolia, as Porto Rican, after study of a barren specimen from a primeval forest near Utuardo.