Lasiococca Hook.f.

Small trees or shrubs, monoecious or dioecious, evergreen; indumentum of simple or often gland-tipped hairs. Leaves alternate, subopposite or often becoming subternately whorled or subverticillate towards branch-ends, entire, penninerved, shortly petioled; stipules caducous. Male flowers: in axillary racemes; calyx splitting into 3 valvate concave segments; petals and disc absent; stamens many, in dense globose heads or much-branched column of basally connate filaments; anther-thecae globose, divaricate; connectives arching over the top and sides of the thecae; pistillode absent. Female flowers: axillary or lateral, on slender solitary pedicels; sepals 5 or 7, unequal, imbricate, glandular, pubescent, persistent and enlarged in fruit; petals and disc absent; ovary 3-loculed, muricate; ovule solitary in each locule; styles 3, filiform, erect, united at base, free above. Fruits capsular, 2-seeded in 3 cocci, densely clothed with hispidly setose paleae, bristles or conical tubercles; seeds subglobose, smooth; testa crustaceous; endosperm fleshy; cotyledons thin, subcordate.

Tropical regions of India, Indo-china and Malesia, showing disjunct distribution, 5 species; 2 in India.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Calyx of female flowers eglandular; spines on the fruits bearing only one or rarely two terminal hairs at apex

1. Lasiococca comberi

b. Calyx of female flowers densely glandular; spines on the fruits bearing dense hispid covering

2. Lasiococca symphyllifolia

List of Lower Taxa