Lactoridaceae

Abstract

Polygamous shrub with alternate leaves and swollen nodes; leaves small, simple, entire, obovate, emarginate, pellucid-punctate; stipules fused among each other and with the adaxial side of the petiole to form a sheath around the branch. Flowers trimerous, small, solitary in the axils, or in 2–4-flowered racemelike short shoots, bisexual, or male, or female, with vestigial pistils or with staminodia; pedicels at the base with an adaxial prophyll; sepals 3, imbricate; petals none; stamens in two whorls of 3, short, with applanate filaments; thecae bisporangiate, extrorse, opening with slits; connective shortly protruding; inner stamen whorl or both whorls often staminodial; carpels 3, in a single whorl, connate at the base, otherwise free; ovary narrowed into a short style with a decurrent stigma; ovules anatropous, bitegmic, weakly crassinucellate, on long funicles inserted on intruding marginal placentas, 4–8 in each ovary; endosperm development nuclear. Fruit follicular, beaked; seeds with abundant oily endosperm and a very small, dicotyledonous embryo.