Balanopaceae

Abstract

Dioecious small to tall evergreen trees; older bark with white, circular, prominent lenticels; hairs simple, unicellular. Leaves basically alternate, dimorphic, shoots with minute scale leaves proximally and foliage leaves distally, the latter sometimes subverticillate and restricted to the shoot tip; foliage leaves petiolate, with prominently to obscurely toothed margins; stipules a pair of minute teeth at the base of the petiole. Inflorescences usually subtended by scale leaves, less commonly by foliage leaves, in staminate plants a catkin; staminate flowers short-pedicellate and axillary to scales on the catkin axis, subtended by one or several bracts or vestigial perianth lobes, these often fewer than stamens; stamens (1-)3-6(-12), filaments short, anthers dehiscing laterally; a vestigial pistil sometimes present; pistillate plants with solitary subsessile or short-pedicellate flowers in the axils of scale leaves, with numerous densely crowded, spirally arranged deltoid "cupular” bracts subtending the naked ovary, or a terminal flower surrounded by further lateral flowers also subtended by cupular bracts; staminodes 0; gynoecium syncarpous, 2(3)-carpellate; ovary 2(3)-locular, the locules imperfectly septate at anthesis but fully septate in fruit; ovules 2 per carpel, collateral, borne axile-basally, bitegmic and intermediate between apotropous and epitropous; stylodia connate at the base and once or twice bifurcate to form ribbon-like lobes stigmatic on the adaxial surface. Fruit a yellow, orange or brown drupe with rather thin fleshy mesocarp, subtended at the base by a cup of numerous imbricate, concrescent bracts; pyrenes 2-3; endosperm fleshy during fruit maturation, but crushed at maturity, and forming only a thin layer around the embryo; embryo large, green, straight. n = 20 (21).