Pyrenaria Blume

Prennial shrubs or trees. Leaves large, serrate, chartaceous or coriaceous. Flowers subsessile, axillary, solitary or 2 - 3 in clusters, erect or nodding; bracteoles usually 2. Sepals 5 - 6, usually 5, unequal. Petals 5 - 6, shortly connate at base. Stamens numerous, connate at base and often adnate to the base of petals. Ovary 5 - 6 -loculed with 2 - 3 laterally attached ovules in each locule; styles 3 - 5, free, partly or totally united. Fruit a drupe or capsule, indehiscent or rarely partially dehiscent. Seeds hemispheric to oblong, wingless with a prominent hilum on the ventral side, testa woody; cotyledons large, crumpled or conduplicate; radicle inferior, inflexed.

In Asia, ca 30 species; 3 in India.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Leaves glabrous; bracts orbicular, smaller than sepals

2

b. Leaves pubescent; bracts ovate to oblong, larger than sepals

2. Pyrenaria diospyricarpa

2a. Fruits woody, with 5 stigmatic heads at apex and persistent sepals at base

3. Pyrenaria khasiana

b. Fruits fleshy, without stigmatic heads and persistent sepals

1. Pyrenaria barringtonifolia

List of Lower Taxa