Costa Rican St. John’s Wort

Appearance

Shrub or small tree 0-4.5 m tall, erect, flat-topped, with branches strict, lateral and sometimes pseudo-dichotomous. Stems yellow-brown, 4-lined and ancipitous when young, becoming terete, with transverse corky emergences, cortex exfoliating in strips; internodes 1.5-4 mm long. Leaves sessile, imbricate and tetrastichous at first, spreading then becoming appressed, tardily deciduous near the base (usually after withering) or persistent; lamina 10-15 x 1.5-3.5 mm, narrowly elliptic to oblanceolate, plane to recurved, not carinate, concolorous, not glaucous, subcoriaceous to coriaceous; apex acute, base cuneate, not sheathing, pair free but with incomplete narrow interfoliar ridge; basal veins 3-5, parallel, inner pair (of 5) branching above, tertiary reticulation not visible; laminar glands rather dense, impressed above, not prominent beneath. Inflorescence 1 -flowered, terminal and on short lateral shoots, with extension shoots from 2-3 nodes below; pedicel 2-5-4 mm long; upper leaves bracteose. Flowers 25-30 mm in diam., stellate. Sepals 7.5-9 x 1.5-2 mm, linear- lanceolate, acute; veins 5, unbranched, midrib not prominent; glands mostly linear, punctiform near apex. Petals bright yellow to orange-yellow, not (?) tinged red, 13-18 x 7-10 mm, c. 2 x sepals, oblanceolate to obovate; apiculus acute; glands linear, interrupted distally. Stamens c. 100, longest 6-9 mm long, 0.35-0.5 x petals. Ovary 1.5-2.5 x 1-1.5 mm, ovoid; styles 3, 9-10 mm long, 4-6 x ovary, free, spreading, distally incurved; stigmas small. Capsule 6-7 x 4-5 mm, broadly ovoid or ellipsoid to globose, shorter than sepals. Seeds 1-1.3 mm long, scarcely carinate; testa finely scalariform.

Distribution

Native from Costa Rica.

Habitat

Common in Paramo habitat, high in the mountains, above the tree line.