Vines and Climbing Plants of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands

Vines and Climbing Plants of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands 301
1. HETEROPTERYS
Twining vines, shrubs, or small trees, usually with malpighiaceous hairs. Leaves simple, entire,
opposite, usually with glandular depressions on the blade; petioles usually with a pair of stipitate
glands; stipules minute or absent. Flowers bisexual, in axillary or terminal umbels, corymbs, or
pseudoracemes. Calyx of 5 basally connate sepals, 4 of which have a pair of glands on the outer
surface, or less frequently eglandular. Petals yellow, pink, or white; stamens 10, unequal, fertile, the
filaments connate at the base, the anthers ellipsoid to oblong; ovary superior, of 3 connate carpels, the
styles 3, free, erect, thick. Fruit a schizocarp of 3 samaras with a dorsal wing. A genus of approximately
125 species, the great majority distributed throughout the Neotropics.
Key to the species of Heteropterys
1a. Petals pink; leaves 1.5-2 cm long ………………………..…..…………...........… 2. H. purpurea
1b. Petals yellow; leaves 7-15 cm long…………………………………………………..............…… 2
2a. Stems not lenticellate; leaves with the lower surface densely appressed-ferruginous-pubescent;
petioles with two glands in the middle ..……………………..................… 3. H. wydleriana
2b. Stems densely lenticellate; leaves with the lower surface glabrous; petioles without glands
…………………………………………………………………………...........….. 1. H. laurifolia