Taccaceae

  • K. Kubitzki
Chapter
Part of the The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants book series (FAMILIES GENERA, volume 3)

Abstract

Perennial herbs from a solid, starchy, tuberous, globose, or elongated, vertical or horizontal rhizome; indumentum of minute pluricellular hairs present on young parts. Leaves all basal, large, long-petiolate with entire, pinnatifid, palmately partite, or palmatisect blade with pinnately divided segments, appearing together with the inflorescence; venation palmate or pinnate, with a secondary network. Inflorescence borne on a radical scape, involucrate, cymose, umbel-like; involucral bracts (2−)4(−12); floral bracts numerous, filiform, drooping, sometimes inconspicuous. Flowers bisexual, actinomorphic, epigynous; tepals 6, all dark-coloured, more or less petaloid; stamens 6 in 2 whorls, attached to perianth tube or to base of tepals; filaments short, flat and somewhat petaloid, forming, together with the broad connectives, a sort of hood over the inflexed anther; anther tetrasporangiate and dithecal, introrse, opening by longitudinal slits; ovary 6-ribbed, inferior, tricarpellate, unilocular, with more or less intruded parietal placentas, each with numerous ovules; septal nectaries present in several species; disc rarely (T. leontopetaloides) present but nectar secretion doubtful; style 1, provided with 3 incised wings; stigmatic branches 3, obcordate, often petaloid; ovules pendulous, anatropous, bitegmic, crassinucellar. Fruit a berry or a loculicidal capsule; seeds strongly ribbed, sometimes with a thin fleshy aril and fleshy raphe; embryo small; endosperm copious, more or less cartilaginous, storing protein and fat, but no starch and no or little hemicellulose. n = 15.

Keywords

General Reference Secondary Network Floral Bract Involucral Bract Arnold Arbor 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Selected Bibliography

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1998

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  • K. Kubitzki

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