16. Sladeniaceae
肋果茶科 le guo cha ke
Authors: Tianlu Min & Bruce Bartholomew
Trees, evergreen. Stipules absent. Leaves simple, spiral, petiolate; leaf blade secondary veins pinnate, margin serrate or entire. Inflorescences axillary, dichasial cymes; bracts lanceolate, caducous. Flowers bisexual, pedicellate; bracteoles 2, caducous, inserted at base of calyx. Sepals 5, persistent, imbricate, scarious. Petals 5, white, basally slightly connate. Stamens (8-)10(-13), in 1 whorl, inserted at base of corolla; filaments short, basally thickened, apically constricted and introrsely flexed; anthers introrse, basifixed, pilose, basally sagittate, apically 2-cleft, dehiscing by apical pores; pollen grains uniform, tricolpate. Ovary superior, conic, glabrous, 3-loculed, apically tapering into an elongated slightly 3-parted style; ovules 2 per locule, pendulous, anatropous. Fruit grayish, long conic to flask-shaped, with 8-10 vertical striations, 3-loculed with 2 seeds per locule. Seeds suspended from apex, elongately subtriangular when fresh, irregularly winged when dry; testa transparent, finely reticulate; embryo elongate; endosperm absent.
One genus and two species: E and SE Asia; two species (one endemic) in China.
The E African genus Ficalhoa Hiern is sometimes included in Sladeniaceae.
Wang Yu-sheng. 1984. Sladenia. In: Feng Kuo-mei, ed., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 49(2): 302.
