Clusia rosea
species of plant
Clusia rosea, the autograph tree, copey, cupey, balsam apple, pitch-apple, and Scotch attorney, is an evergreen, tropical and sub-tropical flowering plant species in the family Clusiaceae. The name Clusia major is sometimes misapplied to this species.
Description
Clusia rosea is a tree native to the Caribbean, including the Bahamas, Hispaniola (such as in Los Haitises National Park), Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and to Florida, southern Mexico, Central America, and northern South America from Ecuador to Colombia, Venezuela, and the Guianas.
It is a hemiepiphyte; that is, it grows as an epiphyte on rocks or other trees at the start of its life and behaving like a strangler fig as it gets larger. Like a strangler fig, it successfully competes for light by outgrowing, overtopping and "strangling" its host tree with its many aerial roots. These roots are among the fastest growing known; up to 30 cm (12 in) in 24 hours.
The petals are pink to white. The thin upper leaf tissue registers 'writing' giving it the common name "autograph tree". The tree produces a fleshy, light green toxic fruit; once the fruit splits, the seeds are consumed by birds and other wildlife. Clusia species are normally dioecious, but in C. rosea, there are pistillate (female) individuals only, and seeds are formed through agamospermy.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Clusia rosea” is species of plant. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Clusia, rosea and species, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “species of plant” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5775234. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Current terminology should not be projected backward without checking the classification used when the underlying evidence was created. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clusia rosea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.