Wahoo

Images

Click on image to view full size

Wahoo flowers and leaves

Wahoo buds

Wahoo leaf

Wahoo leaves

Wahoo fruit

Wahoo bark

Wahoo

Wahoo flower

Wahoo fruit

Morphology

Trunk

Erect; bark gray, smooth or slightly flaky; wood white or yellowish white, hard.

Twigs

Purplish brown, becoming green, rigid, usually 4-angled, not corky winged, glabrous; leaf scars half-round; pith white; buds green to purplish green, ovoid, .1 to .2 inch, apex acute, scales glabrous.

Leaves

Deciduous, opposite, simple; petiole .4 to .8 inch; blade ovate to elliptic, rarely lanceolate, 2 to 3.6(-4.8) inches long, .4 to 2 inches wide, base acute to wedge-shaped, margins serrulate, apex acute to acuminate, lower surfaces green, puberulent along veins, upper surfaces green, glabrous.

Flowers

Inflorescences axillary on new growth, cymes, 7-20-flowered; peduncles .8 to 2 inches, glabrous; pedicels .08 to .16 inch, glabrous. Flowers bisexual, radially symmetric; sepals 4, distinct, purple or greenish purple, ovate, .04 to .06 inch; petals 4, distinct, reddish purple to brownish purple, ovate, .12 to .16 inch long, .14 inch wide; disk 4-lobed, purple; stamens 4; pistil 1, ovary superior, 4-locular, embedded in disk; style absent; stigma 4-lobed.

Fruit

August-October; capsules, pink, pinkish purple, or yellowish red, obovoid, deeply 4-lobed, 1 or 2 lobes sometimes aborted, .45 to .5 inch long, .6 to .67 inch wide, smooth; seeds 2 per locule, yellowish brown, ovoid to ellipsoid, .24 to .3 inch long, .16 to .2 inch, smooth; aril red, completely surrounding seed.

Ecology

Habitat

Floodplain forests, stream banks, wooded slopes, bluffs, thickets.

Distribution

East 1/2 of Kansas