Trema micranthum
orthographic variant of plant species name
Trema micranthum (sometimes Trema micrantha), the Jamaican nettletree or capulin, is a plant species native to warmer parts of the Western Hemisphere. It has been reported from Mexico, Central America, tropical South America, the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and southern Florida.
Description
Trema micranthrum is a shrub or small pioneer tree up to 10 m (33 ft) tall or more. Leaves are egg-shaped, up to 9 cm (3.5 in) long, green on top but covered with white, woolly pubescence underneath. Flowers are greenish-white. Fruits are yellow to bright reddish-range, up to 4 mm (0.16 in) in diameter.
It is noted for its fast growth rate; as much as 14 m (46 ft) in two years has been recorded.
Uses
Following the recent local extirpation of slow-growing xalama in San Pablito, Mexico due to unsustainable harvesting driven by tourism, the Otomi people now use T. micranthum bark strips as a raw material for making handmade amate paper.
Phytochemicals
Claims have been made that T. micranthum may contain cannabidiol, a non-psychoactive but medicinally useful component known from Cannabis. However, as with similar claims previously made about the related plant Trema orientale, such claims have not yet been independently replicated by other researchers and are not yet widely accepted by the scientific community.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Trema micranthum” is orthographic variant of plant species name. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Trema, micranthum and orthographic, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trema micranthum” 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.