Common Name: strawberry tree
Family: Muntingiaceae
Common Synonyms: none
USDA Hardiness Zone: 8a-11b
Growth Habit: Tree
Origin: Mexico, Central and South America
FISC Category: -
FDACS Listed Noxious Weed: No
Introduction Date: Earliest Florida specimen vouchered in 1961
IFAS Assessment:
Small evergreen tree, 3–12 m tall, growing and flowering continuously on fan-like branches; mainline branches becoming erect after leaf fall and so in turn contributing to the formation of the trunk. Branches horizontal, pendant towards the tip, soft-hairy. Leaves simple, ovate-lanceolate, 4–14 x 1–4 cm, with prominently asymmetrical leaf base; leaf margin serrate, lower leaf surface greyish pubescent. Flowers in 1–3(–5)-flowered supra-axillary fascicles, with five white petals; number of stamens increasing from 10–25 in the first emerging flower in the fascicle to more than 100 in the last; late flowers do not normally set fruit. Fruit a dull-red berry, 15 mm in diameter, with several thousand tiny seeds in the soft pulp.
Disturbed lowland tropical forests, abandoned pastures, agricultural lands, forest edges, vacant lots, and along roadsides and margins of waterways
Propagates by seeds, but also by cuttings and suckers
NA
Dave's Garden. 2022. Muntingia species, Jamaican cherry. https://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/56251/ Accessed April 3, 2022.
CABI. 2017. Invasive Species Compendium. Muntingia calabura. https://www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/35164 Accessed on April 3, 2022.