The Families of Flowering Plants
The Families of Flowering Plants | |
~ Balanophoraceae
Habit and leaf form. Red herbs (with thick, simple flowering stems). Plants of very peculiar vegetative form (without chlorophyll, the unbranched stems with reduced leaves and terminating in crimson, clavate inflorescences); more or less fungoid. Leaves much reduced. Plants with roots; succulent; totally parasitic (without chlorophyll). Parasitic on roots of the host. Perennial; rhizomatous (the rhizomes bearing haustoria). Leaves alternate; membranous (reduced to deltoid scales).
Leaf anatomy. Stomata present.
Stem anatomy. Primary vascular tissue centrifugal. Secondary thickening absent. Vessel end-walls simple.
Reproductive type, pollination. Unisexual flowers present. Plants monoecious, or polygamomonoecious (?). Gynoecium of male flowers pistillodial (small).
Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in spikes, or in heads. Inflorescences terminal, crimson, clavate (phalloid), ‘composed of numerous suppressed false capitula’ (Airy Shaw 1973). Flowers minute.
Perianth sepaline (?); 1–5(–8) (male flowers), or 1–5 (female flowers); free, or joined (?).
Androecium 1. Androecial members free of the perianth. Stamens 1. Anthers versatile; introrse. Pollen grains aperturate; 3 aperturate; colpate, or colporate (to colporoidate).
Gynoecium of female and bisexual flowers, on the evidence of the style, 2 carpelled. The pistil 1 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous (but pseudomonomerous); supposedly synstylovarious to eu-syncarpous (pseudomonomerous); inferior. Ovary 1 locular. Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1 (flattened, longitudinally grooved, with two stigmatic points); apical. Placentation apical. Ovules in the single cavity 1; pendulous; without integuments, or unitegmic (?); crassinucellate. Endosperm formation cellular.
Fruit non-fleshy; small, indehiscent; a nut. Seeds endospermic; with a testa. Embryo rudimentary at the time of seed release.
Geography, cytology. Holarctic. Temperate to sub-tropical. Mediterranean.
Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Crassinucelli, or Tenuinucelli (? — ovules crassinucellate, endosperm development cellular). Dahlgren’s Superorder Balanophoriflorae; Balanophorales. Cronquist’s Subclass Rosidae; Santalales. APG (1998) family of uncertain position at the highest group level. Species 2. Genera 1; only genus, Cynomorium.
Illustrations. • Technical details (Cynomorium).
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: 10th April 2008. http://delta-intkey.com’.
