Quillajaceae

Abstract

Evergreen glabrous trees with saponaceous bark; nodes unilacunar. Leaves alternate, simple, penninerved, leathery, serrate, shortly petioled; stipules small, caducous. Inflorescences terminal and axillary few-flowered botryoids, terminal flower hermaphroditic, lateral ones staminate. Flowers 5-merous, rather large, tomentose, pedicels with prophylls; sepals valvate; petals spathulate, white or cream-coloured; disk thick, fleshy, lining the receptacle and produced into 5 lobes adnate with the sepals; stamens 10, the antesepalous 5 inserted near the apex of the disk-lobes some way up the sepals and the antepetalous near the base of the ovary; filaments subulate; anthers bithecate, introrse; carpels 5, cohering by their bases; stylodia terminal, with decurrent stigmas; ovules numerous, 2-seriate, ± horizontal, pleurotropous. Follicles spreading star-like, dehiscing ventrally and dorsally with 2 coriaceous valves. Seeds many, exotestal, with long wing at apex; endosperm thin; cotyledons convolute. 2n = 28. A single genus with two species from warm-temperate South America.

Keywords

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