Randia longiloba

Randia longiloba is recognized by these distinctive features:

It is a shrub or small tree reaching 10 m (33 ft) high, armed at branch tips with paired spines up to 10 mm (0.4 in) long. Stipules up to 2 mm (0.08 in) long clustering at petiole bases are triangular, sharp-pointed, and may or may not persist with age. Leaves with short petioles are up to 10 cm long (4 inches) and about half as wide. They cluster at tips of stems and side spurs and are generally elliptic in shape. Blade margins bear no teeth, lobes or indentations, and have up to 10 secondary veins. Plants are dioecious, with a few very aromatic flowers arranged in clusters. Atop inferior ovaries, the bottom parts of the white corollas form tubes atop which 5 petals or lobes spread broadly. Male flowers are considerably smaller than female ones. Fruits are berry-type, spherical or nearly so, smooth and hairless, and up to 5 cm (2.0 in) in diameter. Seeds are up to 6 mm (0.24 in) long.

Randia longiloba is endemic just to the southeastern Mexican states of Campeche, Chiapas, Quintana Roo and Yucatan.

In Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula the Mayan people hollow out the spherical fruits of Randia longiloba so that the hard rinds can serve as cups to hold sacred atole during religious ceremonies.

The genus name Randia is a New Latin construction meant to honor the English botanist Isaac Rand. The species name longiloba is New Latin based on the Latin longus, meaning "long", and Greek lobos, for lobe -- "long-lobed". Probably this refers to the species' long corolla lobes, for when Hemsley formally described Randia longiloba he remarked that the corolla lobes relative to the corolla tube were long.

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