Along a cowpath, through the rancho's woods, a small tree about ten feet tall (3m) has been issuing clusters of small, greenish flowers
However, it's the blossom that's most informative, being so distinctive that offers hope for identification.
First of all, there's no indication at all of the male stamens, so our picture shows a unisexual female flower. The spherical, vaguely three-lobed item in the blossom's center is the ovary, and it's topped by four or maybe five styles. The ovary arises from the center of a white-woolly, doughnut-like thing that's present in only certain plant families, often known as a disc.
The unisexual flower with a vaguely three-lobed ovary pointed toward the big Euphorbia or Spurge Family and reminded me that we've seen a flower similar to this, a small tree in thorn forest scrub up at RÃo Lagartos on the Yucatan's northern coast. That tree had been identified as Adelia oaxacana, a species too obscure to bear a useful common name.
Two Adelia species are listed for the Yucatan, and our cowpath tree is the second one. It's ADELIA BARBINERVIS, commonly occurring in the Yucatan's disturbed habitats, and described as a component of the "regrowth ecosystems" resulting from Mayan slash-and-burn milpa/cornfield agriculture.
Adelia barbinervis is fairly well documented on the Internet, but Adelia oaxacana is not. Herbarium specimens shown on the Internet show that the leaves of Adelia oaxacana are shallowly lobed at their bases, while leaves of our present Adelia barbinervis gradually diminish toward their bases. I found Adelia oaxacana flowering in June at the same time leaves emerged after the dry season, but the present Adelia barbinervis is flowering among leaves that have been present the entire rainy season.
Adelia barbinervis is native to southern Mexico south to El Salvador. Traditionally its leaves and fruits have been steeped in hot water to prepare a tea for general body-ache, and bathing the body with the tea has been thought to heal flesh wounds.
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