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Flor de Maga
Plate 1 of 2. (c) Brent Baker, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Brent Baker · via iNaturalist

Flor de Maga

Thespesia grandiflora

Thespesia grandiflora, most commonly known as maga and maga colorada ("red-colored maga"), and also erroneously referred to as amapola (a Puerto Rican term for hibiscus), is a tree in the Malvaceae family of the rosids clade endemic to Puerto Rico, where its flower is officially recognized as the national flower of Puerto Rico. Originally native to the humid, lower limestone mountains of the Cordillera Central and the Northern Karst Belt in the western and north-central regions of the main island, it grows everywhere in the archipelago due to its extensive cultivation. The maga is mostly used as an ornamental plant, but like the related portia, its wood is also valued for its durable timber. It is grown as an ornamental tree in Florida, Hawaii, Honduras, and various Caribbean islands.

Though the maga is contained within the same family as hibiscus and may sometimes be referred to as such in English and amapola in Puerto Rican Spanish, truly it belongs to a different genus, and is more closely related to cotton.

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Where it lives

Recorded sightings

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geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.

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Every page naming Thespesia grandiflora in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →

This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 67701.