Citronella mucronata (Ruiz & Pav.) D.Don

An evergreen tree up to 60 ft high; young shoots downy, ribbed. Leaves alternate, of hard leathery texture like those of a holly, ovate or oblong, pointed, 11⁄2 to 31⁄2 in. long, 3⁄4 to 2 in. wide, entire on the flowering shoots of adult trees, spiny, much larger, and more rounded at the base on young ones, glabrous and dark glossy green; stalk 1⁄8 to 1⁄4 in. long, downy. Flowers fragrant, 3⁄8 in. wide, yellowish white and densely crowded in a cluster of panicles, each 1 to 2 in. long and produced in the terminal leaf-axils and at the end of the shoot in June. The individual flower, which has its various parts in fives, is almost stalkless, but the main and secondary flower-stalks are clothed with brown down. Fruit an egg-shaped drupe 2⁄3 in. long, containing one fleshy seed surrounded by a hard shell. Bot. Mag., t. 8376.

A native of central Chile, rare in the wild. It was introduced by the Hon. W. Fox-Strangways about 1840 to the garden at Abbotsbury in Dorset, where a tree of this species planted around 1840 was about 60 ft high in 1911 [it no longer existed by 1988]. The only other sizeable example in the open air grows in the National Botanic Garden at Glasnevin, Eire. It measured 25 × 2 ft in 1974. This tree, even when some seventy years old, still bore the spiny foliage characteristic of young trees and suckers, and this is true of the present tree in the garden, which measures 26 × 1 ft 8 in. at 21⁄2 ft. It has been propagated, and plants distributed to a number of collections. The example in the National Botanic Garden, Glasnevin, Eire, measureD 23 × 41⁄4 ft in 1980.

The explanation for the synonym C. chilensis is that in 1782 Molina gave a short description of a Chilean plant which he named Citrus chilensis. If this was in fact the present species, as some botanists believe, the epithet chilensis would be the correct one to use.