Clusia "guttifera"

General
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There is a common ornamental Clusia, or pitch-apple, that is used in south Florida landscaping. It is often sold as Clusia rosea, but that’s our native south Florida Pitch-Apple tree, with large leaves, and distinctive waxy flowers and fruit. The “Small-leaf Clusia” that has become so common in the south Florida landscape has smaller leaves, and either does not or rarely flower or fruit in south Florida. Its leaves are small compared to the native C. rosea, and its growth structure is more shrub-like, not tree-like, as in the occasionally epiphytic C. rosea.

There is much confusion surrounding this small ornamental variety. It has recently been dubbed “Clusia guttifera,” the “Small-leaf Clusia,” but that name is not listed in any plant database I’ve seen, including iNaturalist because this ornamental variety is poorly understood by science, or potentially is a hybrid of of other Clusia species. As a result, many Clusia rosea observations on iNat are actually of this small ornamental variety that is becoming known as C. guttifera.

There needs to be clarification. Even if it isn’t yet known what C. guttifera is, it’s clearly not the native C. rosea. A provisional “Clusia guttifera” ID option should be available until further information becomes available so as to avoid muddying the water and spreading more confusion in the interim.

Here’s a related article by UF/IFAS: https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/sarasotaco/2024/02/07/flora-da-friendly-features-imposter-pitch-apple/

Thoughts? Suggestions? Remedies? Thank you!

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Q: Are the misidentified Clusia “guttifera” plants showing up outside of cultivation? Or are all/most of such observations properly labeled as “not wild” and relegated to Casual status?

My suggestion is to ID these at genus level with a hard disagree for Clusia rosea if you’re confident of that.

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If Clusia “guttifera” is a provisional species name, you can use the “Provisional Species Name” observation field to record it and keep track of them. Since it doesn’t seem to be a formally described taxon, making it a taxon on iNaturalist isn’t an option. As for what to ID these as, I agree with gcwarbler that they should be IDed as just Clusia until some kind of taxon (which might be a hybrid) is described in the literature for them. If they are definitely not Clusia rosea, you should disagree with that ID when present.

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Many landscaping cultivars are a mix of 2 or more species, sometimes in different genera, and are often mislabeled when sold, making IDing when the escape cultivation problematic. There are also a lot of natural species that are not yet described or poorly understood, and can’t reliably by ID’d to species. The best option in all those cases is to ID them to whatever level they can be ID’d to (genus, or even family in some cases), and leave a note why.

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