101 YUCATAN TREES INDEX

"GAUMER'S BAKERIDESIA"

During most of the year, out in the forest, a certain ten-ft-tall tree (3m), a member the Hibiscus Family, can be found bearing the 1½-inch-wide (3.8cm), yellow flowers shown below:

GAUMER'S BAKERIDESIA

That's Bakeridesia gaumeri, known only from the Yucatan Peninsula and a single collection in Honduras. It has no commonly accepted English name so I'm making up "Gaumer's Bakeridesia." Sometimes flowers have red "eyes" -- the bases of the individual petals are red.

GAUMER'S BAKERIDESIA fruitIn the Hibiscus Family often fruit structure is more useful for identification than flower anatomy. An immature fruit, unusually hairy and divided into ten sections, or carpels, is shown at the right.

Apparently "Gaumer's Bakeridesia" is exquisitely adapted for the northern Yucatan's rather dry, scrubby forests, for the species disappears as the forest grows more lush and moist farther south.

"Gaumer's Bakeridesia is pretty enough and long-flowering enough to be planted as an ornamental. It's a species just waiting to be noticed by the gardening world.

101 YUCATAN TREES INDEX