Bikkia tetrandra (Chamorro: gausåli) is an herbaceous member of the family Rubiaceae, distinguished by its white square-shaped flowers.
[3][4][5][6][7][8] There were two failed legislative proposals on Guam in 2014 and 2018 to make Bikkia tetrandra the official territorial flower.
[12] In 1781, the species was first described in the scientific literature and named Portlandia tetrandra by Swedish naturalist, Carl Linnaeus the Younger, based on samples collected from Niue (then known as Savage Island).
[17] Additional specimens were collected by French naturalists, Jacques Bernard Hombron and Élie Jean François Le Guillou during the 1837–1840 Dumont-d'Urville expedition aboard the Astrolabe.
Both Linnaeus (who first described the species) and Richard (who gave the plant its current binomial name), are listed as the botanical authorities: thus "Bikkia tetrandra (L.f.) A.Rich."
[18] In 1866, the French botanist, Adolphe-Théodore Brongniart, reviewing the numerous specimens from Gaudichaud, Hombron and Le Guillou, proposed splitting the species into five separate species: B. forsteriana from Niue and Solomon Islands, B. mariannensis from Guam, B. guilloviana in New Guinea, B. hombroniana from Tonga, and B. gaudichaudiana from Waigeo, Tahiti, and New Guinea.
[20] In 1975, French botanist, André Aubréville, examined plants collected from Grand Terre and Isle of Pines in New Caledonia and provided an identification key to the Bikkia genus.
However, in modern usage, "chiute" is the name for a different species with large white flowers, Cerbera odollam.