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~ Grossulariaceae.
Habit and leaf form. Small trees, or shrubs. Leaves alternate to opposite; non-sheathing; simple. Lamina entire. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins entire.
Axial (stem, wood) anatomy. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring (?).
The axial xylem with fibre tracheids.
Reproductive type, pollination. Unisexual flowers present. Plants dioecious. Gynoecium of male flowers vestigial (minute), or absent.
Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers solitary (female), or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’ (male); when solitary and female, terminal; when male, in cymes, or in corymbs. The ultimate inflorescence units cymose. Inflorescences terminal, or axillary; the males in few-flowered, corymbose terminal or axillary cymes. Flowers regular; 4–5 merous; cyclic. Free hypanthium absent.
Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 6–10 (male flowers), or 8–10 (female flowers); 2 whorled; isomerous. Calyx 3–5 (male flowers), or 4–5 (female flowers); 1 whorled; gamosepalous; 3–5 blunt-lobed (male flowers), or toothed (minutely, in female flowers), or entire (sometimes, in both male and female flowers); cupuliform (and sometimes flattened, in male flowers), or tubular (shortly, in female flowers); open in bud (?). Corolla 3–5 (male flowers), or 4–5 (female flowers); 1 whorled; polypetalous; imbricate; regular; at least somewhat fleshy; deciduous.
Androecium 3–5. Androecial members free of the perianth; free of one another; 1 whorled. Androecium in male flowers exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 3–5; isomerous with the perianth; oppositisepalous; filantherous (the filaments short and thick, the anthers rather large, ellipsoid). Anthers dorsifixed (despite being extrorse); non-versatile; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; extrorse. Pollen grains aperturate; 3(–4) aperturate; colporate (or irregularly 3–4 aperturate).
Gynoecium 2 carpelled. Carpels reduced in number relative to the perianth. The pistil 2 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; synstylovarious; inferior. Ovary 2 locular. Epigynous disk present (in female flowers, fleshy and four-angled). Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1; apical; shorter than the ovary (thick, persistent). Stigmas 2 (these large); commissural (in Kaliphora, which may belong here), or dorsal to the carpels (?). Placentation axile. Ovules 2–6 per locule; pendulous to ascending; superposed, or biseriate; anatropous.
Fruit non-fleshy; dehiscent, or indehiscent; a capsule, or capsular-indehiscent. Capsules when dehiscent, loculicidal. Seeds copiously endospermic, or non-endospermic; winged (and compressed), or wingless (subglobose).
Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar.
Physiology, phytochemistry. Iridoids detected; ‘Route I’ type (normal). Proanthocyanidins present.
Geography, cytology. Paleotropical. Sub-tropical to tropical. Southwest and tropical East Africa, Madagascar.
Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Tenuinucelli (?). Dahlgren’s Superorder Corniflorae; Cornales. Cronquist’s Subclass Rosidae; Rosales. APG III core angiosperms; core eudicot; Superorder Asteranae; lamiid. APG IV Order Solanales.
Species 4. Genera 2, or 3; Grevea, Montinia (and Kaliphora?).
General remarks. This compiled description is very inadequate.
Illustrations. • Kaliphora madagascariensis: Hook. Ic. Pl. 11 (1867–71). • Montinia acris: Engler and Prantl, Nat. Pflanzenfam. (1897).
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or 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 or lacking specified attributes, distributions of character states within any set of taxa, geographical distribution, genera included in each family, and classifications (Dahlgren; Dahlgren, Clifford, and Yeo; Cronquist; APG). See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
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 April 2024. delta-intkey.com’.
