A Neotropical Savanna

One of the more common trees in our area is this one, often called sangrillo in Panama. Sangrillo means “a little red” from sangre, for blood, and -illo giving it the diminutive form. But when you first see the tree you don’t see its little red blood. What you notice are the brown or light green undersides of the leaves and, most of the year, the globular buds at the ends of the branches.

When I first thought about identifying this tree, I zoomed in on those leaves. The color of their undersides reminded me of many of the Miconia leaves around here. At least one species in Panama is called dos caras – named for the “two faces” of the leaves.

But a quick look shows that the sangrillo (left image below) lacks the longitudinal veins of the Miconia (right image below).

      

Since those longitudinal veins are characteristic of the entire family to which Miconia belongs – the Melastomataceae – and the sangrillo doesn’t have them, then I thought I’d better start the identification from scratch.

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The leaves of the Clusia tree caught my eye the first time we walked around the abandoned pastureland that was to become our property. They are shiny, attractive, and succulent-like. Botanists say the leaves are “leathery” and I suppose it was that leather-like texture that caused someone to try scratching a word on the leaf. Not only is it possible to do that, but the word will remain as a scar on the leaf for the rest of the leaf’s life. For this reason, it is sometimes called the “autograph” tree. The local name for our common Clusia is copé, literally translated as “I won.” I wonder what is won under a Clusia tree.

Once you’ve lived among these trees, though, you’re able to see their beautiful flowers and exotic fruits. I began to want to know which species of Clusia we had. There are 300 species of Clusia in the new world tropica (Maas), but only five species listed in the Tree Atlas of Panama, which made me think I might be able to discover which species we had. However, despite the excellent illustrations in the Tree Atlas, I was not confident of any identification.

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I think that Clusia is an attractive tree and I like its leathery leaves and interesting flower and fruit.

But it has what we humans might call a nasty habit: it can strangle other trees, just like the famous strangler figs, of which the banyan is an example.

This one, found on our neighbor’s property as we were walking with them today, has strangled both a tree and a rock, though the rock probably didn’t care.

I’ Another feature of the tree I like is its bark.

But when our gardener saw a Clusia growing adjacent to one of our nance fruit trees, he cut it down.

Now I know why.

This plant, often a tree, is very common around here, but I saw its flowers only this week and so started making a serious effort to identify it. The lavender flower glistens with something sticky. When the fruit opens, you see red seed pods. The fruit and seed pods are sticky, too. The way the fruit opens, I would have thought it was going to eject the seeds, but the pods cling to the interior of the fruit. (Click on either image for a larger view.)

As usual, what strikes me as one of the most characteristic features of a plant is not what strikes botanists as important. In this case, it is what I consider the succulent nature of the leaves.

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