Gyrostemonaceae

Abstract

Short-lived trees or shrubs, or annuals, dioecious or monoecious, glabrous or papillose, soft-wooded. Branchlets commonly orange, brown or red. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, sessile or petiolate, commonly succulent; stipules very small. Flowers small, actinomorphic or almost so, solitary, or in racemes or compound racemes, axillary or terminal. Calyx broadly cupular, lobed or entire, persistent, imbricate in bud. Corolla absent. Male flower: stamens 7–100, in one or several concentric series, when uniseriate with a central disc; anthers almost sessile, quadrangular, 2-locular, opening widely by longitudinal slits. Female flower: carpels 1 to many, either connate around a central column, or fused; ovules 1 per carpel, campylotropous; placentation axile; style very short or lacking; stylodia as many as carpels, stigmatic, free or shortly united with each other, rarely divided. Fruit a dry or succulent schizocarp, a hard achene, or a syncarp; carpels often falling before shedding seeds. Seeds reniform to U-shaped, usually rugose, red-brown; aril prominent, translucent; embryo strongly curved; endosperm present. n = 14 (Keighery 1975).