P. san-joseanum C. DC. Shrub or small tree, usually ca 2 (3) m tall, +/- glabrous; branches often black when dry. Petioles to 6 cm long, vaginate-winged to blade; blades thin, round-ovate, sharply acuminate, usually cordate at base, 8-20 cm long, glabrous except at margin, drying with pellucid dots, the veins 9-13, palmate. Spikes usually 10-16 cm. long, 2-4 mm thick in fruit; peduncles ca 1 cm long; bracts rounded, densely ciliate with long white trichomes (+/- contiguous in spiral arrangements). Fruits obpyramidal, smooth, depressed-truncate at apex; stigmas 3, linear, deciduous. Croat 4582, 6908. Occasional, in clearings. Showing little seasonal flowering behavior, which is no doubt beneficial to its weedy, invading nature. Most flowering commences sometime after the first rains (usually in July) and continues into the earliest part of the dry season, occasionally to the end of the dry season. The fruits develop quickly, most maturing in the late rainy and early dry seasons. Cut parts are strongly and pleasantly aromatic. Guatemala to Ecuador and Brazil; West Indies; usually sea level to 1,200 m. In Panama., known from tropical moist forest all along the Pacific slope and on the Atlantic slope in the Canal Zone and San Blas, from tropical dry forest in Herrera, Coclé, and Panama, from premontane moist forest in the Canal. Zone and Veraguas, from premontane wet forest in Colón, Veraguas, Los Santos, Coclé, and Panama, and from tropical wet forest in Colón, and Darien.