Rhodomyrtus tomentosa is a flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

 in the family Myrtaceae

Myrtaceae

The Myrtaceae or Myrtle family are a family of dicotyledon plants, placed within the order Myrtales. Myrtle, clove, guava, feijoa, allspice, and eucalyptus belong here. All species are woody, with essential oils, and flower parts in multiples of four or five...

, native to southern and southeastern Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, from India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, east to southern China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

 and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

, and south to Malaysia and Sulawesi

Sulawesi

Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands. In Indonesia, only Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua are larger in territory, and only Java and Sumatra have larger Indonesian populations.- Etymology :The Portuguese were the first to...

. It grows in coast

Coast

A coastline or seashore is the area where land meets the sea or ocean. A precise line that can be called a coastline cannot be determined due to the dynamic nature of tides. The term "coastal zone" can be used instead, which is a spatial zone where interaction of the sea and land processes occurs...

s, natural forest, riparian zone

Riparian zone

A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the fifteen terrestrial biomes of the earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks are called riparian vegetation, characterized by...

s, wetland

Wetland

A wetland is an area of land whose soil is saturated with water either permanently or seasonally. Wetlands are categorised by their characteristic vegetation, which is adapted to these unique soil conditions....

s, moist and wet forests, bog

Bog

A bog, quagmire or mire is a wetland that accumulates acidic peat, a deposit of dead plant material—often mosses or, in Arctic climates, lichens....

 margins, from sea level up to 2400 m elevation .

Description

Rhodomyrtus tomentosa is an evergreen

Evergreen

In botany, an evergreen plant is a plant that has leaves in all seasons. This contrasts with deciduous plants, which completely lose their foliage during the winter or dry season.There are many different kinds of evergreen plants, both trees and shrubs...

 shrub

Shrub

A shrub or bush is distinguished from a tree by its multiple stems and shorter height, usually under 5–6 m tall. A large number of plants may become either shrubs or trees, depending on the growing conditions they experience...

 growing up to 4 m-12 feet tall. The leaves

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

 are opposite, leathery, 5-7 cm long and 2-3.5 cm broad, three-veined from the base, oval, obtuse to sharp pointed at the tip, glossy green above, densely grey or rarely yellowish-hairy beneath, with a wide petiole

Petiole (botany)

In botany, the petiole is the stalk attaching the leaf blade to the stem. The petiole usually has the same internal structure as the stem. Outgrowths appearing on each side of the petiole are called stipules. Leaves lacking a petiole are called sessile, or clasping when they partly surround the...

 and an entire margin. The flower

Flower

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...

s are solitary or in clusters of two or three, 2.5-3 cm diameter, with five petal

Petal

Petals are modified leaves that surround the reproductive parts of flowers. They often are brightly colored or unusually shaped to attract pollinators. Together, all of the petals of a flower are called a corolla. Petals are usually accompanied by another set of special leaves called sepals lying...

s which are tinged white outside with purplish-pink or all pink.

The fruit

Fruit

In broad terms, a fruit is a structure of a plant that contains its seeds.The term has different meanings dependent on context. In non-technical usage, such as food preparation, fruit normally means the fleshy seed-associated structures of certain plants that are sweet and edible in the raw state,...

 is edible, 10-15 mm long, purple, round, three or four-celled, capped with persistent calyx

Sepal

A sepal is a part of the flower of angiosperms . Collectively the sepals form the calyx, which is the outermost whorl of parts that form a flower. Usually green, sepals have the typical function of protecting the petals when the flower is in bud...

 lobes, soft, with 40-45 seed

Seed

A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...

s in a double row in each cell; seed dispersal is by frugivorous birds and mammals. Seed production and germination

Germination

Germination is the process in which a plant or fungus emerges from a seed or spore, respectively, and begins growth. The most common example of germination is the sprouting of a seedling from a seed of an angiosperm or gymnosperm. However the growth of a sporeling from a spore, for example the...

 rates are high. , , .

Synonyms include Myrtus canescens Lour., Myrtus tomentosa Aiton, Rhodomyrtus parviflora Alston, and Rhodomyrtus tomentosa (Aiton) Wight. Common names include Ceylon hill gooseberry (English), Downy myrtle (English-Florida), Downy rose myrtle (English-Florida), Feijoa (French), Hill gooseberry (English), Hill guava (English), Isenberg bush (English-Hawaii), Myrte-groseille (French), and Rose myrtle (English-Florida) http://www.issg.org/database/species/search.asp?sts=sss&st=sss&fr=1&sn=Rhodomyrtus+tomentosa&rn=&hci=-1&ei=-1&x=29&y=7.

Cultivation and uses

It has shown promise as a fire retardant

Fire retardant

A fire retardant is a substance other than water that reduces flammability of fuels or delays their combustion. This typically refers to chemical retardants but may also include substances that work by physical action, such as cooling the fuels; examples of these include fire-fighting foams and...

 species for use in fire breaks in the Himalayas

Himalayas

The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...

. It is a popular ornamental plant

Ornamental plant

Ornamental plants are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as house plants, for cut flowers and specimen display...

 in gardens in tropical and subtropical areas, grown for its abundant flowers and sweet, edible fruit. The fruit can be made into pies and jams

Jams

Jams is a line of clothing produced by Jams World. Jams shorts, a popular clothing item in the 1960s and 1980s, were closely associated with the surf scenes in California and Hawaii.-History:...

, or used in salads. In Vietnam, the fruits are used to produce a wine called rượu sim.

Management

It has become an invasive species

Invasive species

"Invasive species", or invasive exotics, is a nomenclature term and categorization phrase used for flora and fauna, and for specific restoration-preservation processes in native habitats, with several definitions....

 in some countries, spreading to form large, monospecific thickets that displace native flora

Flora

Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...

 and fauna

Fauna

Fauna or faunæ is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is flora.Zoologists and paleontologists use fauna to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess shale fauna"...

. Areas especially affected include Florida

Florida

Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...

, Hawaii

Hawaii

Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...

, and French Polynesia

French Polynesia

French Polynesia is an overseas country of the French Republic . It is made up of several groups of Polynesian islands, the most famous island being Tahiti in the Society Islands group, which is also the most populous island and the seat of the capital of the territory...

.

It is able to invade a range of habitats, from pine flatwoods to mangrove

Mangrove

Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...

 marshes . It grows in a wide range of soil

Soil

Soil is a natural body consisting of layers of mineral constituents of variable thicknesses, which differ from the parent materials in their morphological, physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics...

 types, including salty coastal soil, but is sensitive to heavy salt spray. It is fire-adapted, i.e., is able to resprout prolifically after fire.

This species invades the understory

Understory

Understory is the term for the area of a forest which grows at the lowest height level below the forest canopy. Plants in the understory consist of a mixture of seedlings and saplings of canopy trees together with understory shrubs and herbs...

 of native pinelands

Pinelands

Pinelands can refer to the following things:* Pine Barrens * New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve* Pinelands Regional School District, a school district in Tuckerton, New Jersey, USA...

 in Florida, forming dense monoculture thickets that displace native flora and fauna through overcrowding and competition. Has the potential to alter the natural fire regimes of invaded areas.

A risk assessment of Rhodomyrtus tomentosa for Hawaii and other Pacific islands was prepared by the Kaulunani Urban Forestry Program and US Forest Service. The alien plant screening system is derived from Pheloung et al. (1999) with minor modifications for use in Pacific islands. The result is a score of 8 and a recommendation of "Likely to cause significant ecological or economic harm in Hawaii and on other Pacific Islands as determined by a high WRA score, which is based on published sources describing species biology and behavior in Hawaii and/or other parts of the world."

In integrated management, seedlings can be removed manually. Mature shrubs may be felled using a chainsaw

Chainsaw

A chainsaw is a portable mechanical saw, powered by electricity, compressed air, hydraulic power, or most commonly a two-stroke engine...

 or brush cutter, and the stumps treated with a commercial herbicide

Herbicide

Herbicides, also commonly known as weedkillers, are pesticides used to kill unwanted plants. Selective herbicides kill specific targets while leaving the desired crop relatively unharmed. Some of these act by interfering with the growth of the weed and are often synthetic "imitations" of plant...

.

It was introduced to Florida and Hawaii in about 1920 (Degener, 1963 in Langeland and Burks, 1999). In Florida it has now spread to 17 counties (Center for Natural Resources, 2003). On Hawaii it was forming impenetrable thickets on Kauai and Hilo by the 1950s (Hosaka and Thistle, 1954 in Langeland and Burks, 1999). It is currently on the State of Hawaii noxious weed list (Meyer, 1998 in PIER, 2003). Research was conducted at the University of Florida 1998-2000 to describe the ecology and determine effective control methods for this species.

It is also a serious problem on Raiatea, French Polynesia (Meyer, 1998 in PIER, 2003).