The Families of Flowering Plants
The Families of Flowering Plants | |
Habit and leaf form. Trees (with peltate-scaly indumentum); bearing essential oils; leptocaul. Mesophytic. Leaves alternate; spiral; petiolate; non-sheathing; gland-dotted; aromatic; simple. Lamina entire; pinnately veined; cross-venulate. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins entire. Leaves without a persistent basal meristem.
Leaf anatomy. Hairs present. Complex hairs present; peltate (fimbriate).
Lamina dorsiventral. The mesophyll with spherical etherial oil cells.
Stem anatomy. Cork cambium present; initially superficial. Nodes bilacunar (but with three traces, according to Lammers et al. 1986), or tri-lacunar (?). Cortical bundles absent. Medullary bundles absent. Internal phloem absent. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring. The secondary phloem stratified into hard (fibrous) and soft (parenchymatous) zones. ‘Included’ phloem absent. Xylem with fibre tracheids. Vessel end-walls simple, or scalariform and simple. Wood parenchyma apotracheal (continuous-banded). Sieve-tube plastids S-type. Pith with diaphragms.
Reproductive type, pollination. Plants hermaphrodite. Pollination entomophilous.
Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers solitary (or paired, on axillary short-shoots). Bracts calyptrate, or not calyptrate. Flowers large; calyptrate (calyptra representing either bracts or an outer perianth whorl); regular; partially acyclic. The perianth acyclic, the androecium acyclic, and the gynoecium acyclic. Free hypanthium absent. Hypogynous disk absent.
Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 9–11. Calyx 4, or 6; 1 whorled; gamosepalous; calyptrate (i.e the inner whorl of the bracts/perianth conundrum also calyptrate). Corolla 7–9 (merging acropetally into the androecium); polypetalous; imbricate; regular; white, or red. Petals narrow.
Androecium 25–40. Androecial members maturing centripetally; free of the perianth; free of one another; spiralled. Androecium including staminodes. Staminodes 8–10; internal to the fertile stamens; non-petaloid (subulate). Stamens about 15–35; laminar to petaloid. Anthers adnate; non-versatile; dehiscing by longitudinal valves; extrorse (the thecae abaxial). Pollen shed as single grains. Pollen grains aperturate; 1 aperturate; sulcate.
Gynoecium (6–)7–10(–28) carpelled; apocarpous; eu-apocarpous to semicarpous (at first free, but soon concrescent); superior. Carpel apically stigmatic; 1(–2) ovuled. Placentation apical, or marginal. Ovules non-arillate; anatropous.
Fruit fleshy; if the original carpels seen as individual fruits, an aggregate. The fruiting carpels coalescing into a secondary syncarp (i.e. the carpels of the one gynoecium fusing to form a fleshy, gall-like syncarp). Seeds endospermic. Endosperm not ruminate; oily.
Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar.
Physiology, biochemistry. Alkaloids present (4 species). Iridoids not detected.
Geography, cytology. Tropical. Eastern Malaysia and Northern Australia. 2n = 24.
Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Crassinucelli. Dahlgren’s Superorder Magnoliiflorae; Magnoliales. Cronquist’s Subclass Magnoliidae; Magnoliales. APG (1998) basal order; Magnoliales. Species 2. Genera 1; only genus, Galbulimima.
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’.