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CONNARACEAE R. Brown

牛栓藤科 niu shuan teng ke

Authors: Lingdi Lu & Nicholas J. Turland

Trees small, shrubs, or vines, erect or scandent, evergreen or deciduous. Leaves alternate, exstipulate, petiolate; leaf blade odd-pinnate, 3-foliolate, or 1-foliolate; leaflets subopposite or alternate, usually leathery, margin entire, rarely lobulate. Inflorescences terminal, pseudoterminal, or axillary, paniculate or racemose, bracteate. Flowers bisexual, rarely unisexual, actinomorphic, small. Sepals (4 or)5, free or united at very base only, imbricate or valvate, persistent and clasping base of fruit. Petals (4 or)5, free, rarely slightly connate at middle, imbricate or valvate, rarely circinate. Stamens 5–10, hypogynous or perigynous, in 2 whorls alternately longer and shorter, those opposite petals often shorter and abortive; filaments free or shortly connate at base; anthers didymous, dorsifixed in proximal 1/2, introrse, short, dehiscing longitudinally. Disk thin or absent, surrounded by base of stamens. Carpels (1–) 5(–8), free, 1-celled, hirsute. Style subulate or filiform; stigma subcapitate, simple or 2-lobed. Ovules 2 in each carpel (1 sometimes sterile), collateral, erect. Fruit a usually solitary follicle, sessile or stipitate, dehiscing usually along adaxial suture, sometimes along abaxial one, very rarely circumscissile at base, sometimes indehiscent. Seed 1(or 2), erect, usually arillate, rarely exarillate; testa thick; aril colored, fleshy; endosperm present or absent; embryo straight; cotyledons thick and fleshy in exalbuminous seeds, thin in albuminous ones.

Between 12 and 24 genera and 180–390 species: mainly in Africa and tropical Asia, some species in the subtropics, only a few species in the New World; six genera and nine species (one endemic) in China.

Chen Shao-xing. 1986. Connaraceae. In: Yü Te-tsun, ed., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 38: 133–150.


1 Leaf blade 3-foliolate or 1-foliolate.   (2)
+ Leaf blade odd-pinnate, with more than 3 leaflets.   (3)
       
2 (1) Carpels 5; stamens usually 10; sepals imbricate; seeds exalbuminous.   5 Agelaea
+ Carpel 1; stamens ca. 10; sepals valvate; seeds thinly albuminous.   6 Ellipanthus
       
3 (1) Carpel 1; stamens ca. 10.   4 Connarus
+ Carpels 5; stamens ca. 10.   (4)
       
4 (3) Sepals imbricate, enlarged in fruit; petals circinate in bud, much longer than sepals.   2 Roureopsis
+ Sepals imbricate, rarely valvate, enlarged or not enlarged in fruit; petals imbricate in bud.   (5)
       
5 (4) Sepals enlarged in fruit; petals longer than sepals; seeds exalbuminous.   3 Rourea
+ Sepals not enlarged in fruit; petals slightly shorter than or equaling sepals; seeds albuminous.   1 Cnestis

Lower Taxa


 

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