Caryocaraceae

Abstract

Trees or shrubs. Leaves trifoliolate, opposite or alternate, the margins of the leaflets serrate, dentate or crenate or rarely entire, often with stipels at base of leaflets; stipules 2-4, usually caducous, or 0. Inflorescences of terminal racemes; pedicels articulated. Flowers large, hermaphrodite, actinomorphic; sepals 5(6), imbricate; petals 5(6), imbricate, caducous, distinct or rarely slightly connate at base or connate at apex to form a calyptra in Anthodiscus; stamens numerous, 55-750; filaments usually connate in a ring at the base, long and slender and usually with some much shorter sterile interior ones which are often recurved, apical portion with numerous vesicles, the sterile filaments often with spirally arranged vesicles along entire length, or the filaments with a row of sterile staminodes at base of interior; anthers basifixed or attached at middle, bilocular; the stamens frequently caducous as a unit together with the petals after pollination; ovary compound, superior, 4(-6)-carpellate in Caryocar and 8-20-carpellate in Anthodiscus, with as many stylodia as carpels (a common style being absent), each with a distal punctiform stigma; the carpels unilocular each with a single ovule; the ovules basal, erect, anatropous or atropous, bitegmic or unitegmic. Fruit a drupe, with 1-4 seeds developing in Caryocar or 8-20 in Anthodiscus; mesocarp indehiscent, usually fatty or fleshy; endocarp hard and woody, muricate, tuberculate or spinulose on outer surface, eventually splitting into 1-seeded pyrenes or mericarps. Seeds often reniform, endosperm thin or lacking, the embryo with a straight, arcuate or spirally twisted radicle, a fleshy hypocotyle, and two small cotyledons.