4. CONNARUS Linnaeus, Sp. Pl. 2: 675. 1753.
牛栓藤属 niu shuan teng shu
Anisostemon Turczaninow; Erythrostigma Hasskarl; Tricholobus Blume.
Lianas, climbing shrubs, or small trees. Branchlets glabrous. Leaves alternate, exstipulate, petiolate, odd-pinnate or 3-foliolate, rarely 1-foliolate; leaflets subopposite or alternate; leaflet blade entire at margin, usually with pellucid glands. Inflorescences mostly terminal, paniculate, large, or rarely subcymose or racemose in distal leaf axils. Flowers bisexual, fragrant. Sepals, petals, and stamens usually glandular. Sepals (4 or)5, broadly imbricate or subvalvate in bud, slightly connate at base, thick and fleshy, persistent but not enlarged after anthesis. Petals 5, free, subequaling or slightly longer than sepals, often coherent at middle, imbricate in bud. Stamens ca. 10, alternately longer and shorter, 5 long ones opposite sepals, 5 short ones opposite petals and often abortive; filaments connate at base; anthers oblong, locules often glandular at base; connective glandular at apex. Carpel 1; ovary globose, 1-loculed, pilose; ovules 2, collateral. Style slender, proximal 1/2 pilose, distal 1/2 glandular pubescent; stigma uniform, oblique. Follicle slightly compressed, sometimes narrowed at base into a long, slender stipe (stipe sometimes thick or almost absent), striate, dehiscing longitudinally along adaxial or sometimes abaxial suture, with persistent calyx, apex obtuse and usually shortly beaked; pericarp woody or leathery. Seed 1, somewhat reniform; testa mostly black-purple, glossy; aril cupular, crenulate or laciniate, fleshy; endosperm absent.
Between 80 and 120 species: pantropical, especially in Africa, America, and SE Asia; two species in China.
