Source:
SSA
Synonym(s):
Schepperia Neck.: 67 (1790); Sonder: 59 (1860).
Description:
Shrubs, unarmed or branches becoming spine-tipped; branches sometimes subsucculent, leafless, scurfy. Leaves simple, solitary, alternate or fascicled, glabrous to farinose, with margins usually entire, sometimes rudimentary or undeveloped. Flowers solitary or fascicled in leaf axils or in terminal, leafless corymbs. Sepals 4, subequal or unequal in 2 series, upper and lower valvate and enclosing lateral sepals. Petals 0. Stamens usually 5-8(-13); androphore with basal, variously shaped, conspicuous nectary. Ovary on an elongated gynophore at least 4 mm long; cylindrical, 1-locular with many ovules attached on 2(-4) placentas; stigma capitate, sessile. Fruit indehiscent or tardily dehiscent, long-cylindrical. Seeds reniform; testa ridged or smooth, often embedded in scarlet matrix. x= 8, 9 (aneuploids, polyploidy).
Distribution:
Species 30, Old World tropics including Arabian Peninsula, India, Australia, Madagascar and islands of the Indian Ocean; 4 in sthn Afr., widespread.
Classification:
Add new comment