The Families of Flowering Plants
The Families of Flowering Plants |
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~ Sapotaceae (unconvincingly)
Habit and leaf form. Trees. Leaves large; alternate; simple. Lamina entire; ovate. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins entire.
Reproductive type, pollination. Plants hermaphrodite, or monoecious, or dioecious, or polygamomonoecious (?).
Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in racemes. The ultimate inflorescence unit racemose. Inflorescences axillary. Flowers one to two bracteolate.
Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla, or sepaline (?). Calyx 5; 1 whorled; polysepalous; much imbricate. Corolla unknown.
Gynoecium 5 carpelled. The pistil 5 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; synovarious, or synstylovarious, or eu-syncarpous; superior. Ovary 5 locular. Ovules (or at least, the seeds) non-arillate.
Fruit fleshy; dehiscent, or indehiscent (?); a capsule (tardily dehiscent), or a berry (?); 1(–10) seeded (?). Seeds non-endospermic; large. Embryo well differentiated. Cotyledons 2 (fleshy, contorted).
Geography, cytology. Paleotropical. Tropical. Western Malaysia.
Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae (two poorly known genera, whose affinities are uncertain); Crassinucelli, or Tenuinucelli (?). Dahlgren’s Superorder Primuliflorae; Ebenales. Cronquist’s Subclass Dilleniidae; Ebenales. APG 3 core angiosperms; core eudicot; Superorder Asteranae; Order Ericales (as a synonym of Sapotaceae?).
Species 2. Genera 2; only genera, Boerlagella, Dubardella.
Inseparable in terms of this description from Rosaceae and Simaroubaceae. Gunn et al. (1992) refer it tentatively to Sapotaceae, from which it seems to differ in the racemose inflorescence and (?)lack of latex.
This description is offered for casual browsing only. We strongly advise against extracting comparative information from it. This is much more easily achieved using the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting specified attributes, summaries of attributes within groups of taxa, geographical distribution, genera included in each family, classifications (Dahlgren; Dahlgren, Clifford, and Yeo; Cronquist; APG), and notes on the APG classification.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 1992 onwards. The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. Version: 25th November 2009. http://delta-intkey.com’.