Mammea
L. emend. De Wilde
Small to medium-sized, resiniferous, evergreen, polygamous and dioecious trees; bark usually smooth, yellowish outside, red inside; sap or latex white or yellow in the inner bark. Leaves simple, opposite or subverticillate, usually coriaceous, glabrous, glossy, dark green above, petiolate, exstipulate, pinnately nerved; venation dense and areolate with a conspicuous pellucid gland in the centre of each areole; scales present at the base of leaves. Flowers solitary or fascicled in reduced cymes, axillary or usually on tubercles of bare branches and trunk. Flowers unisexual or bisexual, actinomorphic; bracts many, decussate, surrounding the base of flowers. Calyx connate in bud, splittipg into to convex halves at anthesis, more or less persistent in fruit. Petals 4, rarely up to 7, white, decussate, caducous. Stamens numerous, usually free; fIlaments slender, white, filiform, free; anthers erect, oblong, dehiscing by longitudinal slits. Ovary in male flowers absent or completely reduced, in bisexual flowers sessile, bilocular, ovules 2 in each locule or tetralocular with 1 ovule in each locule (septa sometimes incomplete); styles short, stout, topped by a broad, peltate, 2 - 4-lobed stigma. Fruits drupaceous, pulpy, indehiscent, usually unilocular, sometimes plurilocular; pericarp leathery Seeds large; surrounded by usually edible, transparent pulp.
Circumtropical-tropical Asia, Africa and America, Malesia, Madagascar & New Caledonia; 47 species, one in tropcal America and West Indies, one in tropical Africa, 20, in Madagascar and 27 in Indomalaya and Pacific region, 2 in India.
Literature. KOSTERMANS, A.J.G.H. (1961). Monograph on Asiatic and pacific species of Mammea. Comm. For. Res. Inst.Indones. Bogor 72: 1 - 63. MAHESHWARI, J.K. (1972). Morpho-taxonomic: studies on Indian Guttiferae. The genera Mammea Linn. s.l. and Kayea Wall. In MURTY, Y.S. et al. Adv. Pl. Morph. 137 - 152, ff. 1 - 52.
Notes. M. suriga (Buch.- Ham. ex Roxb.) Kosterm. an endemic species of Western Ghats is Cultivated in the North and North-east India(?) while M.americana L. is cultivated for its edible fruits. Ochrocarpus Thouars (Nov. Gen. Madagasc. 15. 1806) considered congeneric here is generally distinguished by the bands of secretory canals of the leaves which cross the secondary nerves and more or less fused filaments, while Mammea is distinguished by areoles with a transparent gland in their centre and the free filaments.
Circumtropical-tropical Asia, Africa and America, Malesia, Madagascar & New Caledonia; 47 species, one in tropcal America and West Indies, one in tropical Africa, 20, in Madagascar and 27 in Indomalaya and Pacific region, 2 in India.
Literature. KOSTERMANS, A.J.G.H. (1961). Monograph on Asiatic and pacific species of Mammea. Comm. For. Res. Inst.Indones. Bogor 72: 1 - 63. MAHESHWARI, J.K. (1972). Morpho-taxonomic: studies on Indian Guttiferae. The genera Mammea Linn. s.l. and Kayea Wall. In MURTY, Y.S. et al. Adv. Pl. Morph. 137 - 152, ff. 1 - 52.
Notes. M. suriga (Buch.- Ham. ex Roxb.) Kosterm. an endemic species of Western Ghats is Cultivated in the North and North-east India(?) while M.americana L. is cultivated for its edible fruits. Ochrocarpus Thouars (Nov. Gen. Madagasc. 15. 1806) considered congeneric here is generally distinguished by the bands of secretory canals of the leaves which cross the secondary nerves and more or less fused filaments, while Mammea is distinguished by areoles with a transparent gland in their centre and the free filaments.
KEY TO THE SPECIES
| 1a. Lateral veins closely spaced, 5 - 6 mm apart; pedicels ca 2.5 cm long; petals usually 6, rarely 5; drupes ovoid; flowers solitary or 3 - 10 in lax fascicles or cymes | 1. Mammea nervosa |
| b. Lateral veins distantly spaced, ca 1 cm apart; pedieels 1.5 - 2 cm long; petals 4; drupes obliquely ovoid; flowers in dense fascicles | 2. Mammea suriga |
