page_title: Quassia amara
section_title: Morphology, life form and growth
hierarchical_section_title: Quassia amara / Morphology, life form and growth
caption_attribution_description: English: Quassia amara at the Huntington Library &amp; Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, USA. Identified by sign.
context_page_description: Quassia amara, also known as amargo, bitter-ash, bitter-wood, or hombre grande is a species in the genus Quassia, with some botanists treating it as the sole species in the genus. The genus was named by Carl Linnaeus who named it after the first botanist to describe it: the Surinamese freedman Graman Quassi.
  Q. amara is used as insecticide, in traditional medicine and as additive in the food industry.
context_section_description: A small, multistemmed and slow growing tree with a disorderly growth twiggy limbs. It is a shrub or rarely a small tree, reaching a height up to 6 metres. The pinnate with 3-5 leaflets, deeply veined, polished alternated dark green leaves are 15–25 cm long and distinctive for their broadly winged axis and reddish veins. Leaf rachis are winged. Terminal red-branched racemes of panicles, 10–30 cm long, produces narrow, vivid crimson flowers, 2.5-3.5 cm long, that decorate the tips of each little limb. The flower comprises 5 lanceolate petals, which remain mostly closed together forming a sharpening cylinder.  The flowers are produced in a panicle 15–25 cm long, each flower 2.5-3.5 cm long, bright red on the outside, and white inside. They are generally open for two days during the flowering period and each inflorescence presents on to four open flowers at once. The flowers are fragile and sometimes fall from the rachis at the slightest touch. The fruits, five small eliptic, fleshy, purple black drupes, 0.8-1.5 cm long, replace the flower and turn red as they mature. Every fruit contains one small seedling. All parts of Q. amara contain the bitter Quassimarin.
  
  The tree is predominately pollinated by hummingbirds but also self-compatible. Besides hummingbirds, other birds and Trigona species from the Apidea family do pollination.
caption: Flowers (open and close)
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