Americanized Brazilian Pepper Gardens: Blooms After Fire and Flood

Summary: Americanized Brazilian pepper gardens predicate their fire- and flood-resistant beauty upon tamed seeds, tethered irritants and trimmed basal suckers.

Brazilian pepper tree (Schinus terebinthifolius) on University of California, Santa Barbara, Oct. 8, 2007: Britta Gustafson (Dreamyshade), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Americanized Brazilian pepper gardens add fragrant brown, gray, green, green-white and red beauty outside Florida and Texas, North America's only provinces, states or territories to apply weed designations to Brazilian pepper trees.

The common names Christmas berry, Florida holly and pepper tree beckon master arborists, master gardeners, master naturalists and tree stewards to scented foliage and wildlife-friendly fruit. Foliage and fruit communicate a delectability that the woody plant's chemicals contradict by causing respiratory problems and skin irritation and by competing allelopathically with native vegetation. Globally warmed climate change decreases the incidence of heat-intolerant microclimates in cold-hardy zones and draws the evergreen ornamental native to Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay farther northward.

Brazilian pepper trees exhibit slowed rates of seed and sucker production and of yearly growth, well below 11.81 to 19.68 inches (30 to 50 centimeters), indoors.

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gray scaly-barked trunks and branches of Schinus terebinthifolius, flooded Kanaha Beach Park, Kahului, central Maui, March 23, 2004: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Brazilian pepper seedlings favor bright green for oblong embryonic leaves, called cotyledons, that flaunt inward-curved margins on one side and for stems that fatten into trunks.

Peppers grow, over the course of 35-year life cycles in Americanized Brazilian pepper gardens, into 42.65-foot- (13-meter-) tall trees with gray, scaly bark-covered branches and trunks. The alternate-positioned, compound leaves commonly have seven to nine elliptical to oblong leaflets although some hold as few as three and others as many as 11. The 0.98- to 1.97-inch- (2.5- to 5-centimeter-) long, 0.39- to 1.38-inch- (1- to 3.5-centimeter-) wide leaflets integrate dark green upper surfaces, pale undersides and toothed margins.

Taxonomists judge the scientific name Schinus terebinthifolius particularly appropriate since crushed leaflets juggle aromatic releases reminiscent of turpentine a bit more frequently than those of pepper.

Brazilian pepper tree's green white flowers; Parque Olhos DÁgua, Brasília, Federal District, west central Brazil, April 25, 2010: João Medeiros, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Flower buds keep production of dense, flower-clustered, irregular, 1.58- to 5.91-inch- (4- to 15-centimeter-) long inflorescences, called panicles, restricted to axil unions with current-year, new-growth stems.

Trees, three years of age or older, lavish panicles with green-white, 0.05- to 0.09-inch- (1.2- to 2.5-millimeter-) long flowers whose blooms last one day if male. Female flowers manage one pistil, five fused sepals and six-day-long blooms and their males five white, 0.08-inch- (2-millimeter-) long sepals and 10 stamens on two whorls. Each panicle nurtures as many as 600-plus glossy, seed-bearing drupes 0.16 to 0.28 inches (4 to 7 millimeters) across, whose colors nuance from greens into reds.

Water, wildlife such as birds, and wind operate as dispersion agents for dark brown, kidney-shaped seeds, each with 0.01-inch (0.3-millimeter) diameters, in Americanized Brazilian pepper gardens.

Brazilian pepper tree's berry-like drupes: Leslie J. Mehrhoff, University of Connecticut, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images

Berry-like drupes on Brazilian pepper trees persist as long as eight months as dried, papery shells whereas seeds prove viable for about five months in soil.

Contact with soil usually quickens the occurrence of germination within 20 days for many seeds that qualify, along with suckers, as the Brazilian pepper's reproduction means. The multiple propagation options available to Brazilian pepper, described by Florence-born Italian botanist Giuseppe Raddi (May 23, 1707-Jan. 10, 1778), recall other weed-designated Anacardiaceae family members. Weed designations surface against Atlantic poison oak and poison sumac in Michigan and against poison ivy from Minnesota across Canadian borders into Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec.

Fire- and flood-tolerant Americanized Brazilian pepper gardens trade flower-, foliage-, fruit-harbored chemicals and forest and roadside invasions for March to May and September to November blooms.

Red-footed boobies (Sula sula) reveal utility of Brazilian pepper tree as nesting site with a view, Crater Hill, Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, northwestern Kauai, March 21, 2013: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

Brazilian pepper tree (Schinus terebinthifolius) on University of California, Santa Barbara, Oct. 8, 2007: Britta Gustafson (Dreamyshade), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Brazilian_pepper_tree.jpg

gray scaly-barked trunks and branches of Schinus terebinthifolius, flooded Kanaha Beach Park, Kahului, central Maui, March 23, 2004: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/starr-environmental/24581302512/

Brazilian pepper tree's green white flowers; Parque Olhos DÁgua, Brasília, Federal District, west central Brazil, April 25, 2010: João Medeiros, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schinus_terebinthifolius_flowers.jpg

Brazilian pepper tree's berry-like drupes: Leslie J. Mehrhoff, University of Connecticut, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=5446227

Red-footed boobies (Sula sula) reveal utility of Brazilian pepper tree as nesting site with a view, Crater Hill, Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, northwestern Kauai, March 21, 2013: Forest and Kim Starr, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/starr-environmental/24578753754/

For further information:

Dickinson, Richard; and Royer, France. 2014. Weeds of North America. Chicago IL; London, England: The University of Chicago Press.

Raddi, Giuseppe. MDCCCXX (1820). "Di Alcune Specie Nuove di Retilli, e Piante Brasiliane: 22. Schinus terebinthifolius." Memoria di Matematica e di Fisica della Società Italiana del Scienze Residente in Modena, Parte Contenente le Memorie di Fisica tomo XVIII (2): 399–400. Modena, Italy: Società Tipografica.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ http://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8304561

"Schinus terebinthifolius Raddi." Tropicos® > Name Search.
Available @ http://www.tropicos.org/Name/100350086

Weakley, Alan S.; Ludwig, J. Christopher; and Townsend, John F. 2012. Flora of Virginia. Edited by Bland Crowder. Fort Worth TX: BRIT (Botanical Research Institute of Texas) Press.