''Alfaroa guanacastensis'' is a species of
plant
Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclu ...
in the
Juglandaceae
The Juglandaceae are a plant family known as the walnut family. They are trees, or sometimes shrubs, in the order Fagales. Members of this family are native to the Americas, Eurasia, and Southeast Asia.
The nine or ten genera in the family have ...
family, first described from material found in the vicinity of Guanacaste,
Costa Rica. It is known to flourish at altitudes from 2400 to 3700 feet.
The trees grow to 90 feet tall with a
DBH of up to 2 feet. The lower trunk often has buttresses. The sapwood is white, and the heartwood is pink. The pith is solid.
The
opposite leaves
In botany, phyllotaxis () or phyllotaxy is the arrangement of leaves on a plant stem. Phyllotactic spirals form a distinctive class of patterns in nature.
Leaf arrangement
The basic arrangements of leaves on a stem are opposite and alterna ...
are
pinnate
Pinnation (also called pennation) is the arrangement of feather-like or multi-divided features arising from both sides of a common axis. Pinnation occurs in biological morphology, in crystals, such as some forms of ice or metal crystals, and in ...
ly compound, with opposite to sub-opposite leaflets.
The tree is
monoecious. The staminate inflorescences are
panicles
A panicle is a much-branched inflorescence. (softcover ). Some authors distinguish it from a compound spike inflorescence, by requiring that the flowers (and fruit) be pedicellate (having a single stem per flower). The branches of a panicle are o ...
consisting of several erect catkins. The pistillate inflorescence is a terminal spike, which may be separate from the staminate inflorescence, or may be part of an androgynous panicle. The staminate inflorescences have an odor compared to the gardenia.
The fruit is an oval nut, twice as long as wide, with a bitter meat. Germination is
hypogeal
Hypogeal, hypogean, hypogeic and hypogeous (; ) are biological terms describing an organism's activity below the soil surface.
In botany, a seed is described as showing hypogeal germination when the cotyledons of the germinating seed remai ...
; the first two aerial leaves are simple and opposite.
References
* "Flora Costaricensis" ''Fieldiana: Botany'' 40 40–42, Field Museum of Natural history, Chicago, IL, 1977.
guanacastensis
{{Fagales-stub