Euphroniaceae

Abstract

Medium-sized savannah trees or shrubs with conspicuous arachnoid tomentum of unicellular hairs; branches terete, lanuginose, glabrescent. Leaves alternate, simple, entire or revolute, pinnately veined; stipules minute, caducous. Inflorescences terminal and subterminal racemes or thyrses; bracts minute; prophylls 0. Flowers bisexual, perigynous, obliquely monosymmetric; calyx with 5 subequal, imbricate sepals connate at the base and inserted on a campanulate or campanulate-turbinate cup, the two outer sepals shorter and narrower than the inner ones, the inner surface of the floral cup lined by a smooth unlobed nectary; petals 3, distinct, all of same size, contorted in bud, unguiculate; androecium with a large anterior pointed staminode with sterile anther flanked by two stamen pairs and two posterior groups of 2-3 tooth-like staminodes; each stamen pair with a longer outer antesepalous stamen and a shorter inner antepetalous stamen, these fused with the dilated bases of their filaments; anthers dorsifixed, dithecal, slightly apiculate, introrse, dehiscing with longitudinal slits; filaments of fertile stamens apically glabrous, of the large staminode retrorsely pilose throughout; gynoecium posteriorly positioned, syncarpous; ovary partly inferior, 3-locular; ovules apotropous, bitegmic, incompletely tenuinucellar, 2 per locule, axile, nearly collateral but one pendant, the other erect and shorter; style antrorsely pilose; stigma capitate. Fruit a 3-valved capsule with fleshy exocarp and persisting calyx and androecium, dehiscing septicidally from apex towards base. Seeds 1 per locule, with thin endosperm, slightly winged.