From Common Forest Trees of Hawaii

Juniper Berry
Citharexylum caudatum
Verbena family (Verbenaceae)

Post-Cook introduction

This shrub or small tree introduced as an ornamental has become naturalized locally. It has paired elliptical leaves and narrow clusters of small slightly fragrant white flowers, and showy shiny pear-shaped or elliptical that turn from green to orange, brown or black.


Forest And Kim Starr
shrub or small tree to 50 ft (15 ) high, with trunk 1 ft (0.3 ) in diameter, angled, slightly enlarged at base, and and with spreading Bark gray, smoothish, becoming finely fissured. Inner bark light brown and whitish streaked, bitter. Twigs long and narrow, light gray brown, hairless, with enlarged and raised leaf-scars.

Leaves hairless, on leaf-stalks of 3⁄8–3⁄4 inch (1–2 ). Blades elliptical, 2–5 inches (5–13 ) long and 3⁄4–2 1⁄4 inches (2–6 ) wide, blunt to short-pointed at and short-pointed at base, with edges sometimes slightly turned under, slightly thickened, with few side veins, slightly shiny green above, and beneath dull and paler with many tiny dots visible under a lens. leaf-stalks and midveins often orange red.

Flower clusters () 1 1⁄2–6 inches (4–15 ) long, and lateral, narrow and unbranched. Flowers are many, on short stalks of 1⁄16 inch (1.5 ), about 5⁄16 inch (8 ) long and broad. bell-shaped, 1⁄8 inch (3 ) long and broad, minutely five- the white finely hairy with tube nearly 1⁄4 inch (6 ) long and five spreading slightly unequal rounded 1⁄8 inch (3 ) long; 4 small inserted in tube; and greenish 3⁄16 inch (5 ) long with two-celled slender and slightly two-

() in drooping clusters, nearly 1⁄2 inch (13 ) long, slightly two- fleshy, with remaining at base, containing two elliptical shiny brown nutlets 3⁄8 inch (10 ) long, each single-seeded.

The light brown hardwood is used elsewhere for posts, not for musical instruments, as reported. This species is a honey plant.

An introduced ornamental in Hawaii, it is a common street tree in Honolulu. When young, highly susceptible to wind damage. Naturalized locally, for example, in wet forests at 2000 ft (610 ) altitude on Oahu.

Range
Native of West Indies from Bahamas to Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Dominica. Also from Yucatan, Mexico, and Central America to Colombia. Planted in southern Florida

Other common names
fiddlewood; pendula de sierra (Puerto Rico)

This species is reported to be one of the many hosts of the black twig-borer, a major insect pest.

The generic name Citharexylum is Greek for fiddlewood. The English name fiddlewood and similar ones in French and Spanish for related species apparently were taken from the scientific name without regard to actual use of the wood.

node -- The point at which there is attached growth, as in the place where each leaf is attached.

cm -- A centimeter which is about 0.4 inches.

m -- A meter is about 10% larger than a yard.

stigma - The tip of a pistil that receives the pollen.

style -- This is a long and thread-like structure that connects the stigma with the ovary. A flower may have a single style, or several of them.

The apex is the tip or the furthest point from the attachment.

terminal -- Located at the end (the tip or the apex).

Like the teeth on a saw, leaves and other surfaces can have toothed edges.

A raceme is an unbranched, indeterminate type of inflorescence bearing flowers having short floral stalks along its axis.

A pistil is the female structure of many flowers. It contains one or more carpels. Each carpel contins an ovary, style and stigma. The stigma receives the pollen which grows thru the style to reach the ovary.

An evergreen tree retains a large portion of its green leaves all year.

In an opposite leaf arrangement the leaves come in pairs with one leaf on each side of a stem.

lobe -- Rounded parts of a leaf (or other organ). Lobes bulge out about 1/4 of the leaf diameter.

calyx -- the sepals of a flower, typically forming a whorl that encloses the petals and forms a protective layer around a flower in bud.

fruit -- any seed-bearing structure in flowering plants. It is formed from the ovary after flowering.

drupe -- A fruit in which an outer fleshy part surrounds a hardened shell containing a seed. A peach is a drupe. A raspberry is composed of drupelets.

canopy -- The foliage of a tree; the crown. Also the upper layer of a forest.

Irregular flowers, such as those of the violet or the pea, are often bilaterally symmeteric. These flowers typically have petals of unequal size or shape.

mm -- millimeter. About 1/25th of an inch.

corolla -- The name for all the petals of a flower taken together.

stamen -- the pollen-producing reproductive organ of a flower; The stamen consists of an anther supported by a filament.

An ovary is a part of the female reproductive organ of the flower. Above the ovary is the style and the stigma, which is where the pollen lands and germinates to grow down through the style to the ovary.