Actinidia Lindley

Glabrous, strigose or tomentose, climbing or scrambling shrubs; pith of branches often chambered. Leaves entire or serrate, membranous, penninerved. Flowers poly-gamous or unisexual, solitary or few in axillary, subumbellate cymes or fascicles; bracts minute, 1 or 2 at apices of peduncles. Sepals 5, free or subconnate, imbricate persistent. Petals 5, contorted-imbricate, deciduous. Male flowers with many well developed stamens and rudimentary ovaries with minute styles. Female flowers with well de-veloped ovary. Ovary many-loculed; styles 15 - 30, free, divergent and elongated after flowering, persistent; stamens well developed either empty or with sterile pollen. Berries globose to oblong, glabrous or hairy, spotted with lenticels, usually contain raphides. Seeds numerous, oblong, immersed in pulp.

E. Asia, ca 36 species; 2 in India.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Stems and branches glabrous or minutely tomentose; leaves ovate,obovate to broadly elliptic:

1. Actinidia callosa

b. Stems and branches strigose; leaves ovate to oblong-ovate

2. Actinidia strigosa

List of Lower Taxa