Passifloraceae

Abstract

Tendrillate climbers, less often erect herbs, shrubs, or small trees without tendrils, commonly with cyanogenic compounds; stems woody, often with anomalous secondary growth, or herbaceous, sometimes forming annual shoots from perennial rootstocks or underground runners; nodes trilacunar; supra-axillary accessory buds usually present; tendrils simple, or bi- or trifid near apex. Leaves alternate, often with nectaries on petiole, blade, or stipules; blade variable, unlobed, lobed or seldom compound; venation pinnate, palmate or pedate; stipules usually present, often small and caducous, sometimes foliose. Inflorescences axillary, usually with cymose (seldom racemose) arrangements of triads, rarely on cauline axis; rarely flowers solitary. Flowers usually perfect, regular, perigynous, usually with a saucer-shaped to tubular floral cup, commonly with a gynophore or an androgynophore, rarely with a sessile ovary, or rarely hypogynous; sepals (3-)5(-8), imbricate, free or partially united; petals as many as and alternating with the sepals, imbricate, free or shortly united, or seldom 0; extrastaminal corona of threads, tubercles or scales, in 1-many rows; nectary extrastaminal, either a ring or five discrete antesepalous nectar glands or a nectariferous ring often concealed by an operculum and limen; stamens (4)5 or 8(-numerous), sometimes borne by an androgynophore; carpels (2)3(-5), forming a unilocular ovary; stylodia solid or grooved, mostly distinct or basally fused, rarely style simple; stigmas capitate to discoid and papillate, or laciniate; ovules ± numerous or rarely (Dilkea)few, usually anatropous, rarely orthotropous, mostly on a long funiculus, bitegmic and crassinucellar. Fruit a capsule or often a berry, rarely fleshy with irregular, apical dehiscence; pericarp thick and rind-like to papery and very thin; seeds few to many, often compressed, with a bony testa, often pitted or ridged, rarely winged, surrounded by an apical, pulpy aril; embryo large, straight; endosperm fleshy. Germination is almost always epigeal (Adenia, Passiflora). x = 6, 9, 12.

Keywords

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