Randia longiloba, with no English name, is a species of small tree endemic just to southeastern Mexico. It belongs to the family Rubiaceae.
Description
Randia longiloba is recognized by these distinctive features:
It is a shrub or small tree reaching high, armed at branch tips with paired spines up to long. Stipules up to long clustering at petiole bases are triangular, sharp-pointed, and may or may not persist with age.
Leaves with short petioles are up to 10 cm long (4 inches) and about half as wide. They cluster at tips of stems and side spurs and are generally elliptic in shape. Blade margins bear no teeth, lobes or indentations, and have up to 10 secondary veins.
Plants are dioecious, with a few very aromatic flowers arranged in clusters. Atop inferior ovaries, the bottom parts of the white corollas form tubes atop which 5 petals or lobes spread broadly. Male flowers are considerably smaller than female ones.
Fruits are berry-type, spherical or nearly so, smooth and hairless, and up to in diameter. Seeds are up to long.
Distribution
Randia longiloba is endemic just to the southeastern Mexican states of Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo and Yucatan.
Habitat
In Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, Randia longiloba occurs in low- and medium-height dry forest and moist forests, including those with columnar cacti. Also they occur in acahuales, which basically constitute the revegetation stage of traditional slash-and-burn agriculture, with the possibility of using the cut woody plants, not just burn them.
Ecology
The fruit of Randia longiloba provides food for birds and squirrels.
Human interactions
In traditional ceremonies
In Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula the Mayan people hollow out the spherical fruits of Randia longiloba so that the hard rinds can serve as cups to hold sacred atole during religious ceremonies.
In traditional medicine
An infusion of Randia longiloba bark has been used to treat dengue fever.
As a nematicide
Extracts from Randia longiloba produce a mortality greater than 80% for the root-knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita, known as probably the most economically important plant-parasitic nematode.
For making charcoal
In the Mexican state of Quintana Roo the wood of Randia longiloba is converted to charcoal.
Taxonomy
Randia longiloba was named and formally described by William Botting Hemsley in 1886. In the text, the name is written Randia ? longiloba, as a proposal, remarking that although he'd not seen the fruit, since the flowers had one-celled ovaries, "... it seems better to refer it to Randia rather than Gardenia.
Etymology
The genus name Randia is a New Latin construction meant to honor the English botanist Isaac Rand.
The species name longiloba is New Latin based on the Latin longus, meaning "long", and Greek lobos, for lobe -- "long-lobed". Probably this refers to the species' long corolla lobes, for when Hemsley formally described Randia longiloba he remarked that the corolla lobes relative to the corolla tube were long.
References