Common Name:
Soapberry
Some 13 species of deciduous or evergreen trees and shrubs. Leaves simple or pinnately compound (14-30 leaflets), margins entire, occasionally serrate. Flowers in terminal or axillary clusters, small, white, tinged with yellow, 4-5 petals, 8-10 stamens. Fruit more or less spherical, flesly, leathery drupe. Native to the tropics and subtropics of the Old and New Worlds.
Sapindus: from Latin sapo, soap, and indicus, Indians; a soap was made from fruit (aril) of S. saponaria by North American natives.
Pronunciation:
sa-PIN-dus
Family:
Sapindaceae