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FOC | Family List | FOC Vol. 5 | Urticaceae

4. Dendrocnide Miquel, Pl. Jungh. 1: 29. 1851.

火麻树属 huo ma shu shu

Chen Jiarui (陈家瑞 Chen Chia-jui); Ib Friis, C. Melanie Wilmot-Dear

Trees or shrubs, evergreen, branches sympodial, often with terminal rosettes of leaves, armed with stinging hairs. Leaves alternate, spiral, petiolate; stipules deciduous, intrapetiolar, completely connate, leathery, often large, apex entire; leaf blade leathery or papery, pinnately veined, rarely 3-5-veined, margin entire, undulate, or crenulate; cystoliths punctiform. Inflorescences solitary, pedunculate, generally forming cymose-panicles or racemes unisexual (plants dioecious); female glomerules often with thickened, fleshy flabellate receptacle; bracts present. Male flowers 4- or 5-merous; filaments of stamens inflexed in bud; rudimentary ovary conspicuous. Female flowers: perianth lobes 4, connate at base, subequal, lateral lobes slightly larger; staminodes absent. Ovary ovoid, erect; stigma filiform or ligulate, papillous on 1 side; ovule orthotropous. Achene slightly oblique, often compressed, often large, verrucose, persistent stigma usually reflexed; pedicels simple or swollen, cylindric, not winged. Seeds with thin or no endosperm; cotyledons broad.

About 36 species: S and SE Asia, Australia, Pacific Islands; six species (one endemic) in China.

The stem fibers are used to make ropes. The stinging hairs may be very irritating.


1 Female flowers pedicellate, freely borne or in loose clusters at extremities of peduncles; pedicels often fleshy but not swollen.   (2)
+ Female flowers sessile or subsessile, usually 1 in a row on often fleshy flabellate swollen receptacles.   (3)
       
2 (1) Leaf blade broadly ovate or broadly elliptic, base rounded or subcordate; male flowers 5-merous; achene orbicular-ovoid, ca. 2.5 mm.   5 D. basirotunda
+ Leaf blade elliptic, oblong- or obovate-lanceolate, base often cuneate, sometimes rounded or deeply cordate; male flowers 4-merous; achene pyramidal, 5-6 mm.   6 D. sinuata
       
3 (1) Leaf blade cordate; male flowers 5-merous.   4 D. urentissima
+ Leaf blade ovate or lanceolate; male flowers 4(or 5)-merous.   (4)
       
4 (3) Leaf blade obovate or oblong-lanceolate, base often cuneate.   1 D. stimulans
+ Leaf blade ovate, elliptic, or oblong, base obtuse or shallowly cordate.   (5)
       
5 (4) Inflorescence branches densely armed with poisonous stinging hairs, reddish green; bracts of female inflorescence linear; second year branchlets with stinging hairs.   2 D. meyeniana
+ Inflorescence branches with a few short non-poisonous hairs, whitish green; bracts of female inflorescence triangular; second year branchlets glabrous.   3 D. kotoensis

Lower Taxa


 

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