Kirkiaceae

Abstract

Trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate; imparipinnate, estipulate. Inflorescences axillary or ramiflorous, compound thyrsoids with the cymes dichasial and in higher-branching orders monochasial. Flowers mostly tetramerous, haplostemonous, functionally unisexual, but morphologically bisexual; plants monoecious, polygamomonoecious or dioecious; sepals distinct or very shortly connate at base, triangular, erect; petals distinct, linear and acute; stamens distinct, alternipetalous, inserted outside and beneath disk, in male flowers usually about as long as the petals, in female flowers much reduced; filaments filiform and often broadened slightly towards the base; anthers dorsifixed; disk annular, usually fleshy; gynoecium of 4 or 8 carpels, much reduced in male flowers; ovary superior, syncarpous, synascidiate, narrowly ampulliform, on short gynophore; ovules 1 per loculus; stylodia 4 or 8, slender, proximally contiguous, distally connate; the 4 stigmas capitate, coherent. Fruit a schizocarp, woody and dry, breaking up into 4 or (7)8 single-seeded mericarps, these remaining suspended from the apex of the columella and carrying on their dorsal side the portion of the stylodium to which they were attached. Seeds almost as large as the mericarps, slender, broader and rounded at one end and pointed at the other end, slightly curved, triangular in cross section; endosperm 0; embryo curved; cotyledons fleshy and even.