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Lasia Lour.

刺芋属

Description from Flora of China

Herbs, evergreen, armored, helophytic or of forest swamps. Stem long creeping and stoloniferous with terminal part erect or ascending, with armed internodes. Leaves several, crowded at shoot apex; petiole long, aculeate, inside with longitudinal air vessels; pulvinus well developed, solid; leaf blade sagittate-hastate, simple or divided, prickly abaxially on larger veins, pinnately veined above bifurcate basal veins; secondary venation reticulate. Inflorescences solitary, long pedunculate; peduncle prickly. Spathe constricted above spadix; basal part when mature opening by a slit, long caudate part involute and twisted, at last whole falling off. Spadix sessile, cylindric, within widened part of spathe. Flowers bisexual; tepals 4-6, free, with vaulted-truncate apex. Stamens 4-6; anthers elliptic, dehiscent by a longitudinal slit; filaments much longer. Ovary 1-loculed, 1-ovuled; ovule hanging from apex of locule; style very short; stigma subspherical. Fruit a berry; exocarp thin; mesocarp finely fibrous; endocarp rather thick, leathery, upper part and area around stigma prickly. Seed large, compressed; endosperm absent, embryo large, campylotropous.

Two species: tropical Asia; one species in China.

(Authors: Li Heng (李恒 Li Hen); Peter C. Boyce)

Lower Taxon


 

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