Lecythidaceae
SAIDA QAISER
Department of Botany, University of Karachi, Karachi-32
Trees or shrubs. Leaves simple, alternate, usually large, exstipulate or stipules minute and caducous. Flowers solitary or in racemes or spikes, rather large and showy, regular or irregular, bisexual. Calyx with 4-6 valvate or slightly imbricate lobes. Petals 4-6, free or connate into a campanulate tube. Stamens many, arranged in several whorls, one or more outer whorls modified into staminodes; filaments often united into a short tube; anthers usually versatile, rarely basifixed, staminal disc sometimes lobed. Ovary perigynous to epigynous, 2-loculed; ovules 1-a in each locule with axile placentation. Fruit a berry or a capsule, indehiscent, large, woody, fibrous or fleshy. Seeds exalbuminous.
A family of 15 genera and c. 325 species, chiefly distributed in tropics of the New and Old world. Represented in Pakistan by 2 cultivated genera with one species each.
Acknowledgements: We are grateful to the United States Department of Agriculture for financing this research under P.L-480 with the coordination of Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, Islamabad. Thanks are also due to Mr. I.C. Hedge of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, for his helpful suggestions.
