genus descriptions: SSTAs

Shrubs, trees or lianes. Leaves alternate or more rarely subverticillate or subopposite; petioles often rather long; blade 3-5-foliolate or by reduction 1-foliolate or simple. Inflorescence in terminal or axillary racemes. Flowers bisexual. Sepals 4, valvate, in a single series arising from a cupular receptacle with margin slightly thickened and annular. Petals 4 or many, often longer than sepals. Androgynophore very short. Stamens 12-many; filaments slender, long, outer ones sometimes sterile and petaloid. Ovary borne on a gynophore, 1-locular with 2-4 multi-ovulate placentas; stigma sessile or on a short style. Fruit cylindric, ellipsoid or ovoid, with 3-8 coriaceous valves or indehiscent. Seeds many, embedded in a fleshy pulp.

Monoecious trees; trunk simple or sparsely branched at apex, upper parts and branches armed with short conical prickles. Leaves clustered at apex of stem and at ends of branches, shallowly to deeply 3-5-lobed, strongly cordate at base, +/-orbicular in outline, lobes entire or with subsidiary lobes. Male flowers with calyx +/-entire; corolla tube cylindric, lobes shorter than tube; filaments connate into a ring at base. Female flowers : calyx +/-entire; petals free; androecium entirely absent; stigmas free, connate at base; ovary 5-locular, 5-angled; ovules many, borne in the angle between the septa and the ovary wall. Fruit 5-locular.

Trees with stilt-roots. Leaves peltate with 8-18 radiating segments; in young plants lamina changing from entire to palmatisect, and from basally attached to peltate. Male flowers in many-flowered, globose glomerules borne on the ultimate dichotomies of cymosely branched inflorescences; tepals 2-lobed; stamen 1. Female inflorescences very many in dense clavate, capitate, somewhat flattened spikes; perianth tubular, usually 2-lobed; ovary free. Fruit free, borne inside slightly enlarged, fleshy, greenish perianth; endocarp crustaceous; mesocarp mucilaginous; exocarp membranous. Seed small; endosperm present.

Tall, glabrous, unarmed lianes, latex absent. Leaves opposite to slightly subopposite, simple, entire to faintly dentate, petiolate; stipules free, minute, inserted at nodes. Inflorescences of axillary, dichotomous cymes with a single terminal flower and two equal branches at each fork. Flowers small, somewhat irregular, pedicellate; young buds globose. Sepals 5, imbricate. Petals 5, not spreading but rather arcuate, 4 of them +/-equally arched. Disc divided into 3 crescent-shaped substaminal lobes, each of which enfolds a stamen. Stamens 3; filaments very short, broad; anthers extrorse, transversely dehiscent; pollen small, simple, tricolporate. Ovary with 3 locules, each with 2 ovules; stigmas 3, sessile, together forming a +/-triangular organ which exceeds the stamens, each stigma curved down over an anther. Fruit of 3 flattened mericarps, each dehiscing by median sutures into 2 caducous valves. Seeds 2 in each mericarp, winged, wings with a marginal vein and a submedian vein (raphe); cotyledons not united; radicle acute and prominent; germination epigeal.