''Melicoccus'' is a genus of ten species of
flowering plants in the family
Sapindaceae
The Sapindaceae are a family of flowering plants in the order Sapindales known as the soapberry family. It contains 138 genera and 1858 accepted species. Examples include horse chestnut, maples, ackee and lychee.
The Sapindaceae occur in tempera ...
, native to tropical regions of northern and western
South America.
They are
evergreen trees growing to tall, with alternate
pinnate leaves
A leaf (plural, : leaves) is any of the principal appendages of a vascular plant plant stem, stem, usually borne laterally aboveground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", wh ...
with 4 or 6 opposite
leaflets (no terminal leaflet). The fruit is a
drupe
In botany, a drupe (or stone fruit) is an indehiscent fruit in which an outer fleshy part (exocarp, or skin, and mesocarp, or flesh) surrounds a single shell (the ''pit'', ''stone'', or '' pyrena'') of hardened endocarp with a seed (''kernel'') ...
. Several species, but principally ''
M. bijugatus'', are widely cultivated in their native areas and elsewhere in
Central America and the
Caribbean
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
for their fruit.
Some species of the related genus ''
Talisia'' are sometimes included in ''Melicoccus''.
;Species
*''
Melicoccus antioquensis''
Acevedo-Rodríguez — Colombia
*''
Melicoccus aymardii''
Acevedo-Rodríguez — Venezuela
*''
Melicoccus bijugatus''
Jacq. – Mamoncillo (
Colombia
Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...
,
Venezuela)
*''
Melicoccus espritosantensis''
Acevedo-Rodríguez — eastern Brazil
*''
Melicoccus jimenezii''
(Alain) Acevedo-Rodríguez — Dominican Republic
*''
Melicoccus lepidopetalus''
Radlk.
Ludwig Adolph Timotheus Radlkofer (19 December 1829, in Munich – 16 February 1927, in Munich), was a Bavarian taxonomist and botanist.
Radlkofer became a physician in 1854 and earned a PhD in botany at Jena the following year. He became an asso ...
– Motoyoé or Yva Povo (
Bolivia
, image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg
, flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center
, flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...
, Brazil,
Paraguay), Argentina
*''
Melicoccus novogranatensis''
Acevedo-Rodríguez — Colombia and Ecuador
*''
Melicoccus oliviformis''
HBK — Mexico, Central and South America and Trinidad
*''
Melicoccus pedicellaris''
(Sagot ex Radlk.) Acevedo-Rodríguez Suriname, French Guiana and Brazil
*''
Melicoccus petiolutatus
''Melicoccus'' is a genus of ten species of flowering plants in the family Sapindaceae, native to tropical regions of northern and western South America.
They are evergreen trees growing to tall, with alternate pinnate leaves with 4 or 6 opposi ...
''
Acevedo-Rodríguez — Peru
Taxonomy
The genus ''Melicoccus'' was first described by
Patrick Browne, an Irish doctor and botanist, in 1756. This description was based on ''M. bijugatus'' trees which were cultivated in Jamaica. In 1760,
Nikolaus Joseph von Jacquin
Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin (16 February 172726 October 1817) was a scientist who studied medicine, chemistry and botany.
Biography
Born in Leiden in the Netherlands, he studied medicine at Leiden University, then moved first to P ...
described the first species in Browne's genus, which he named ''M. bijugatus''. In 1762 Linnaeus used a spelling variation of the name ''Melicocca bijuga''. Over the next two centuries, Linnaeus' spelling variation was used in almost all publications. A proposal was made in 1994 to conserve ''Melicocca'' over ''Melicoccus'', but the proposal was rejected, leading to a restoration of the original version of the name.
[
In 1888 German taxonomist ]Ludwig Radlkofer
Ludwig Adolph Timotheus Radlkofer (19 December 1829, in Munich – 16 February 1927, in Munich), was a Bavarian taxonomist and botanist.
Radlkofer became a physician in 1854 and earned a PhD in botany at Jena the following year. He became an asso ...
placed ''Melicoccus'' in the tribe Melicocceae together with eight other genera. In his monograph on the Neotropical members of the tribe ('' Talisia'' and ''Melicoccus'') Pedro Acevedo-Rodríguez suggested that although ''Talisia'' and ''Melicoccus'' appeared to form a monophyletic
In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...
group, the other (Old World) genera probably did not belong to the same lineage.[
]
References
New World Fruits Database: ''Melicoccus lepidopetalus''
Sapindaceae genera
Sapindaceae
{{Sapindales-stub