All Floras      Advanced Search
Login | eFloras Home | Help
Chinese Plant Names | Family List | Loganiaceae

Strychnos Linn.

马钱子属

Description from Flora of China

Shrubs, trees, or lianas, armed or unarmed. If lianas then with axillary simple or double curled tendrils, sometimes with axillary thorns. Stipules often reduced to a straight ciliate ridge connecting petiole bases. Leaves petiolate to sometimes subsessile; leaf blade margin entire, basal veins 3--7, secondary veins 1--3 distinct pairs from or near base curved along margin in species represented. Inflorescences terminal and/or axillary, thyrsoid; bracts scalelike to sepal-like. Flowers pedicellate or sessile, 4- or 5-merous. Corolla rotate to salverform; lobes valvate in bud, spreading to reflexed when open. Stamens inserted at corolla throat to middle of corolla tube, exserted to included; filaments long to short, mostly filiform; anthers orbicular to narrowly oblong, base mostly slightly 2-cleft, introrse, 2-locular and separate. Ovary (1- or)2-locular, with few to many ovules per locule. Style cylindrical; stigma capitate or faintly 2-cleft. Berries orange or red when ripe in species represented, usually globose to ellipsoid, thin- to thick-walled, outside smooth to minutely warty, glabrous; pulp fleshy, usually orange; 1--15-seeded. Seeds ± flattened to saucer-shaped, circular to elliptic in outline; seed coat sericeous, felty, or scabrous and glabrous; embryo spatulate; endosperm horny; cotyledon leaflike.

About 190 species: tropics and subtropics; 11 species in China.

Many species are medicinal and poisonous.

  • List of lower taxa


     

    Related Objects  

    Flora of China  
  • PDF File
  • PDF

  •  |  eFlora Home |  People Search  |  Help  |  ActKey  |  Hu Cards  |  Glossary  |