The Families of Flowering Plants
The Families of Flowering Plants | |
Including Compsoaceae Horan., Tricyrtidaceae
Habit and leaf form. Herbs, or shrubs. ‘Normal’ plants. Perennial; with neither basal nor terminal aggregations of leaves; rhizomatous. Self supporting. Mesophytic. Leaves alternate; spiral, or distichous; petiolate, or subsessile, or sessile; non-sheathing (but sometimes amplexicaul); simple. Lamina neither inverted nor twisted through 90 degrees; entire; lanceolate, or ovate; palmately veined (palmate-parallel); cross-venulate, or without cross-venules; cordate, or attenuate at the base, or cuneate at the base. Lamina margins entire.
Leaf anatomy. Stomata present; mainly confined to one surface.
Lamina dorsiventral. The mesophyll containing calcium oxalate crystals, or without calcium oxalate crystals (Tricyrtis). The mesophyll crystals solitary-prismatic (cuboid). Vessels absent.
Stem anatomy. Secondary thickening absent. Xylem with vessels, or without vessels. Vessel end-walls scalariform.
Root anatomy. Root xylem with vessels; vessel end-walls scalariform.
Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers hermaphrodite. Plants hermaphrodite. Floral nectaries present. Nectar secretion from the perianth.
Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in panicles, in racemes, and in spikes. The terminal inflorescence unit cymose, or racemose. Inflorescences generally few-flowered panicles or thyrses, or spikes with paired or solitary axillary flowers. Flowers small, or medium-sized; regular; 3 merous; cyclic; pentacyclic. Perigone tube absent.
Perianth of ‘tepals’; 6; free; 2 whorled (3+3); isomerous; petaloid; without spots, or spotted (e.g. Tricyrtis); similar in the two whorls, or different in the two whorls (the outer tepals, or all of them, often with a nectariferous spur); white, or yellow, or white and purple, or yellow and purple (i.e. sometimes purple-spotted).
Androecium 6. Androecial members free of the perianth; free of one another, or coherent; if coherent 1 adelphous (the filaments cohering basally); 2 whorled. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 6; diplostemonous. Anthers basifixed; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; extrorse, or introrse. The endothecial thickenings spiral. Pollen grains aperturate; 1 aperturate; sulcate; 2-celled.
Gynoecium 3 carpelled. Carpels isomerous with the perianth. The pistil 3 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; synovarious to synstylovarious (style tribrachiate to various extents); superior. Ovary 3 locular. Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1, or 3; the three partially joined; apical. Stigmas when separate, 3; when joined into one, 3 lobed; wet type, or dry type. Placentation axile. Ovules 5–50 per locule (?); arillate, or non-arillate; anatropous; bitegmic; tenuinucellate. Embryo-sac development Polygonum-type (usually), or Clintonia-type (rarely). Endosperm formation nuclear.
Fruit fleshy, or non-fleshy; dehiscent, or indehiscent; a capsule (dry or fleshy), or a berry. Capsules septicidal, or loculicidal. Seeds endospermic. Endosperm oily. Embryo rudimentary at the time of seed release to weakly differentiated, or well differentiated. Testa seemingly nearly always without phytomelan; brown (mostly), or yellow (or ‘pallid', but perhaps black in Uvularia — Bentham and Hooker, 1880!).
Seedling. Hypocotyl internode present (short). Seedling collar not conspicuous. Cotyledon hyperphyll elongated; assimilatory; dorsiventrally flattened. Coleoptile absent. First leaf dorsiventral.
Physiology, biochemistry. Not cyanogenic. Proanthocyanidins present; cyanidin. Flavonols present; kaempferol and quercetin. Ellagic acid absent.
Geography, cytology. Holarctic, Paleotropical, and Australian. Represented in eastern Asia, North America, Malaysia, New Guinea and Australia, but mainly Northern Hemisphere. X = 13, 14, 16.
Taxonomy. Subclass Monocotyledonae. Superorder Liliiflorae; Liliales. APG (1998) Monocot; non-commelinoid; Liliales (as a synonym of Liliaceae). Species about 50. Genera about 10; Clintonia, Disporum, Kreysigia, Kuntheria, Medeola(?), Prosartes, Schelhammera, Scoliopus(?), Streptopus, Tricyrtis, Tripladenia, Uvularia.
Illustrations. • Uvularia. • Technical details (Tricyrtis).
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’.
