Lantana camara, Cinco Negritos, black fruits are used for natural dye colorant

Lantana is one of the more common roadside weeds of the Neotropics, and is common in many areas of Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica etc. We grow it in our Mayan Ethnobotanical Research Garden of FLAAR Mesoamerica because the colorful flowers attract butterflies.

Much to my surprise, it is not the colorful yellow and orange flowers which give the dye colorant; it is the black fruits (from which the plant gets its common name in Spanish, Cinco Negritos).

I have never seen the pink variety wild in Guatemala; only the orange with yellow set of colors.

Family Verbenaceae; called wild-sage and many other names; but called Cinco Negritos in Latin America due to the color of the small black fruits.

Although frequently listed as a medicinal plant throughout Mesoamerica, most of the plant is toxic, and actually is a great plant to have in your garden because most insects don’t like it (except for the butterflies which are attracted to pollinate it).

• CADENAS, W. E.
• 2015
• Evaluación de etefón sobre el rendimiento de esquejes de exportación en variedades ornamentales de lantana (Lantana camara); Villa canales, Guatemala. Universidad Rafael Landívar. 53 pages.
  
  Available online:
  http://recursosbiblio.url.edu.gt/tesiseortiz/2015/06/03/Cadenas-Walter.pdf

• CARRERE, R.
• 2006
• El camará (Lantana camara): aportes para un mayor conocimiento sobre este arbusto indígena. 25 pages.
  
  Available online:
  www.guayubira.org.uy/monte/Lantana.pdf

• CASTELLANOS, S. E., FLORES, M. L., REINOSO, S. S., CÁCERES, A. and M. E. PAREDES
• 2013
• Morfoanatomía de las hojas de Lantana camara L. (Verbenaceae), especie medicinal popularmente usada en Guatemala. Dominguezia. Vol. 29, No. 2. Pages 15-23.
  
  Available online:
  www.dominguezia.org/volumen/articulos/2923.pdf

• GONCALVES, E., HERRERA, I., DUARTE, M., BUSTAMANTE, R. O., LAMPO, M., VELÁSQUEZ, G., SHARMA, G. and S. GARCÍA
• 2014
• Global invasión of Lantana camara: has the climatic nich been conserved across continents? PLoS ONE. Vol. 9, No. 10. 12 pages.
  
  Available online:
  www.researchgate.net/publication/267333934_Global
  Invasion_of_Lantana_camara_Has_the_Climatic_Niche Been_Conserved_across_Continents
  

• KALITA, S., KUMAR, G., KARTHIK, L. and K. RAO
• 2012
• A review on medicinal properties of Lantana camara Linn. Research J. Pharm. And Tech. Vol. 5, No. 6. Pages 711-715.
  
  Available online:
  www.researchgate.net/publication/229150310_A_Review on_Medicinal_Properties_of_Lantana_camara_Linn
  

• LANNA, J., ALMEIDA, L. C., DEMUNER, A. J. ALVARENGA, E. S., MOREIRA, C. and R. W. BARRETO
• 2012
• Chemical characterization of volatile compounds of Lantana camara L. and L. radula Sw. and their antifungal activity. Molecules. No. 17. Pages 11449-11455.
  
  Available online:
  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.
  1.391.1834&rep=rep1&type=pdf
  

• MATHUR, G. and H. Y. MOHAN
• 1978
• Significance of petal colour in thrips- pollinated Lantana camara L. Annals of Botany, Vol. 42, No. 6. Pages 1473-1476.
  
  Available online:
  https://academic.oup.com/aob/article-abstract/42/6/1473/149115/Significance-of-Petal-Colour-in-Thrips-pollinated?redirectedFrom=PDF
  

• MATIENZO, Y., RAMOS, B. and E. RIJO
• 2003
• Revisión bibliográfica sobre Lantana camara L. una amenaza para la ganadería. Fitosanidad. Vol. 7, No. 4. Pages 45-55.
  
  Available online:
  www.redalyc.org/pdf/2091/209118173010.pdf
  

• PARDO, A. K., ARENAS, J. J., GÓMEZ, M., LORA, F. M. and J. E. GÓMEZ
• 2011
• Determinación de la actividad antifúngica de extractos de Lantana camara frente a Candida spp. Infectio. Vol. 15, No. 4. Pages 235-242.
  
  Available online:
  www.scielo.org.co/pdf/inf/v15n4/v15n4a05.pdf
  

• RATH, A., SWAIN, K., PANIGRAHI, S., ROUTRAY, A., PANDA, S., SAHOO, S. and S. GANGULY
• 2016
• Lantana camara, an alien weed for livestock: a review. Annals of plant sciences. No. 5. Pages 1472-1474.
  
  Available online:
  www.researchgate.net/publication/311774870_Lantana
  camara_An_Alien_Weed_for_Livestock_A_Review
  

www.interreg-bionatura.com/especies/pdf/Lantana%20camara.pdf
Information.

www.fao.org/forestry/13375-06ba52ce294a4e15f8264c42027052db0.pdf
Information and photos.

www.conabio.gob.mx/malezasdemexico/verbenaceae/lantana-camara/fichas/ficha.htm
Information.

www.acguanacaste.ac.cr/paginas-de-especies/plantas/624-verbenaceae/3592-i-lantana-camara-i-vebenaceae
Information and photos.

www.cabi.org/isc/datasheet/29771
Information.

www.theplantlist.org/tpl/record/kew-107934
Synonyms.

First Posted January 2018