20. Pentalinon Voigt, Hort. Suburb. Calcutt. 523. 1845.
[Greek pente, five, and linon, net, alluding to connective appendages intertwined around stigma]
David E. Lemke
Woody vines; latex milky. Stems twining, decumbent, or trailing, occasionally suberect, unarmed, eglandular-pubescent. Leaves persistent, opposite [subopposite], petiolate; stipular colleters intrapetiolar and interpetiolar, or absent; laminar colleters absent. Inflorescences axillary, cymose, pedunculate. Flowers: calycine colleters present; corolla yellow, pale yellow, or cream, funnelform, aestivation dextrorse; corolline corona absent; androecium and gynoecium not united into a gynostegium; stamens inserted near top of corolla tube; anthers connivent, adherent to stigma, connectives appendiculate, elongate appendages intertwined, locules 4; pollen free, not massed into pollinia, translators absent; nectaries 5, alternating with stamens. Fruits follicles, usually paired, erect to deflexed or pendulous, brown, slender, terete, surface striate, glabrous or pubescent. Seeds very narrowly oblong, flattened, not winged, beaked, comose, not arillate. x = 6.
Species 2 (1 in the flora): Florida, West Indies, Central America, n South America.
The species of Pentalinon have previously been treated as members of Urechites Müll. Arg., but B. F. Hansen and R. P. Wunderlin (1986) have convincingly argued that Pentalinon is legitimate and should be used instead of the more familiar, but later, Urechites.
