Pellicieraceae

Abstract

Usually small (more rarely up to 18 m high) mangrove trees with fluted trunk bases. Leaves spirally arranged, asymmetric, involute in bud, glabrous, sessile, exstipulate, the wider half of the blade initially bearing a series of prominent but ephemeral (salt?) glands rolled innermost in bud but after expansion becoming entire; leaf base narrowed to the insertion with a pair of extrafloral nectaries and decurrent. Flowers solitary in the 1–3 leaf axils below the resting terminal bud, pentamerous, sessile, enclosed by 2 prophylls before anthesis, large (−12 cm wide) at anthesis; calyx lobes short, free, quincuncially arranged, with numerous small glands internally at the base; petals free, lanceate, about 6 cm long, ephemeral and falling with the sepals and stamens; stamens 5, free, lying within the alternate groves of the ovary; anthers narrow, about 2.5 cm long, sagittate, distally pointed, extrorsely dehiscing by longitudinal slits; gynoecium 2-carpellate, syncarpous; ovary superior, tapering into a narrow style with a bifid stigma; ovary cylindrical, woody, about 6 cm long with 10 longitudinal grooves; locules 2, each containing a single anatropous ovule pendulous from the inner angle, only one of them developing, or one locule sterile. Fruit indehiscent, napiform, 8–12 cm long and about as wide, somewhat flattened, the style persisting; fruit wall ridged, leathery externally but spongy within; seed solitary, exalbuminous; seed coat at maturity of ribbon-like fragments; embryo cordate, with elongate hypocotyl pointing into the stylar beak; plumule reddish, long, slender and hooked, enclosed by 2 fleshy cotyledons.