Cartrema americana
species of shrub
Cartrema americana, commonly called American olive, wild olive, or devilwood, is an evergreen shrub or small tree native to southeastern North America, in the United States from Virginia to Texas, and in Mexico from Nuevo León south to Oaxaca and Veracruz.
Cartrema americana was formerly classified as Osmanthus americanus. Following the discovery that Osmanthus was polyphyletic, it was transferred to the segregate genus Cartrema together with Osmanthus floridanus and five Asian species.
Cartrema americana grows to 4–7 m (13–23 ft), rarely to 11 m (36 ft) tall. The leaves are 5–14 cm (2.0–5.5 in) long and 2–4 cm (0.79–1.57 in) broad, with an entire margin. Its flowers, produced in early spring, are small (1 cm long), white, with a four-lobed corolla and have a strong fragrance. The fruit is a globose dark blue drupe 6–15 mm (0.24–0.59 in) diameter, containing a single seed.
It is cultivated as an ornamental plant in gardens for its fragrant flowers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Cartrema americana” as species of shrub. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as species of shrub. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q62565078. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cartrema americana” 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.