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Myrtaceae Psidium guayava L.

| | © W.D. Hawthorne

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Species information

Description
12-20 laterals, channelled above (other cultivated guava: P.cattleianum, P.guineense only 5-10, or if more then not well differentiated from finer veins, prominent above); twigs 4 sided; young parts with greyish or red hairs; ft pulp yellow or pink (c. glabrous below, or P.guineense v. hairy with 1mm hairs); infls 1 flowered (3 flowered in P.gui). P.gui. is a v. hairy 2.5m shrub to small tree. Twigs flat not generally 4-sided (ft pulp bitter, not v. edible) P.cat has thin-skinned fts with white sweet pulp.

Interest
Psidium - from Gk psidion, a pomegranate. Fruit eaten fresh or used in jams, jellies, cheese, syrup drinks, ice cream Originating in C.America and lowland S.America. Domesticated in several parts of range like Persea. Taken by portugues to Goa, Spanish to the Philippines. Introduced to Florida 1847. Guava leaves mouth sores, bark boiled to make a dysentery cure. Good charcoal. Mature from seed in 4 years. Weed. In Grenada, used for stomach problems and the leaves, young buds and fruits boiled to make a tea for dysentery, diarrhea stomach ache or worms. Fruits without seedas bit including their skins are boiled and eaten by women when menstrual periods do not stop (Politi, 1996). Avgeris (2003) records this as the most prevalent and efficacious diarrhea cure, in the form of an aqueous extract of guava leaf and bud: this was affective against Shiglla and Salmonella and other pathogenic gut bacteriaa

Specimen information

Collector
Hawthorne, W.D.

Specimen Number
s.n.