27. Fosbergia Tirvengadum & Sastre, Biogeographica (Paris). 73(2): 88. 1997.
大果茜属 da guo qian shu
Authors: Tao Chen & Charlotte M. Taylor
Trees or shrubs, unarmed; bark gray or reddish brown and scaly. Raphides absent. Leaves opposite but sometimes crowded at stem apices, often with domatia; stipules generally persistent, interpetiolar or shortly united around stem, triangular. Inflorescences terminal or displaced to pseudoaxillary, 2-7-flowered and cymose or reduced to 1 flower, pedunculate, bracteate. Flowers subsessile to pedicellate, apparently bisexual and monomorphic. Calyx limb shallowly 5-lobed. Corolla white, salverform, fleshy to leathery, inside variously pubescent; lobes 5, convolute in bud. Stamens 5, inserted in corolla throat, included; filaments short; anthers perhaps dorsifixed. Ovary 2-celled, ovules numerous in each cell on axile placentas; stigma fusiform to clavate, shallowly bilobed, partially exserted. Fruit baccate, thickly fleshy, globose to ellipsoid, smooth or infrequently ridged or tuberculate, color at maturity unknown, with calyx limb tardily deciduous; seeds numerous, medium-sized to large, broadly angled, ovoid, or compressed, embedded in pulp.
At least five species: China, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam; three species (one endemic) in China.
Tirvengadum and Sastre (loc. cit.: 87-94) implied without directly stating so that the flowers are hermaphroditic, and Puff et al. (Rubiaceae of Thailand, 62. 2005) reported this condition tentatively. The pollen is reportedly "simple, 3-porate"; the ovary wall contains "crystal sands present in small clusters in mesocarp"; and the testa cells have "tube-like trabecular thickenings, [with] inner wall irregularly thickened."
