Trichopodaceae

Abstract

Shortly rhizomatous perennials, unarmed throughout. Aerial shoots long-lived, elongate, twining to the right, or short and then foliage reduced to a single leaf. Leaves alternate, petiolate, the petiole with a proximal pulvinus only or lacking pulvini; blade lanceolate to cordate-ovate, principal veins palmate, acro- or camptodromous, secondary venation reticulate. Flowers perfect, epigynous, moderately small to medium-sized, long and slenderly pedicellate, solitary and axillary or arranged in axillary or terminal fascicles or short racemes; pedicel not articulated. Perianth regular, trimerous, 2-whorled, more or less campanulate; tepals similar; stamens 6, arranged in 2 cycles; filaments distinct, shorter than the anthers, these short, 2-thecate and tetrasporangiate, introrsely dehiscent, the thecae separated by a wide connective, the latter produced into a lanceolate appendage as long as or longer than the thecae and connivent over the stigma; thecae of adjacent stamens meeting with their edges. Ovary syncarpous, 3-locular at anthesis, style short, stigma 3-lobed, the lobes shortly bifid; placentation axile, ovules anatropous, bitegmic, tenuinucellate (at least in Trichopus), 2 and superposed in each loculus. Fruit 1-to 6-seeded, dry or slightly fleshy, indehiscent or opening by irregular ruptures (Bouman 1995), with three longitudinal keels or wings. Seeds ovoid or oblong, more or less compressed, unwinged, deeply and irregularely furrowed, the embryo minute, with a terminal cotyledon and embedded within abundant, hard, starch-free endosperm; both integuments 2-layered, and both contributing to the mechanical tissue.