Cullenia Wight

Tall evergreen trees; branchlets lepidote. Leaves simple, oblong, rounded at base acute to acuminate at apex, entire, glabrous and glossy on upper surface, covered with numerous overlapping scarious hyaline peltate scales on lower surface. Flowers ramiflorous, densely fasciculate on protuberances of stem and old branches; pedicels articu-late near the middle, densely lepidote. Epicalyx irregularly 3 - 4-lobed, splitting to the base on one side, densely lepidote outside, deciduous. Calyx irregularly 5-dentate at apex, carnose, densely lepidote outside. Corolla absent. Staminal tube 5-lobed, each lobe with 7 - 11 stamens along the margin; filaments very short; anthers small, globose to subglobose, unilocular, circumscissile; pollen grains more or less sphaeroidal, 3-colporate, sexine finely granular to smooth. Ovary densely covered with long stipitatf peltate scales, 5-locular, rarely 6, with 2 - 6 superposed ovules in each locule; style longer than staminal tube; stigma capitate and densely papillate. Capsules nearly globose covered with stout spines, dehiscing into 5-valves. Seeds 1-few in each locule, surrounded by fleshy aril.

Restricted to Sri Lanka and India; ca 3 species 1 in India.

Literature. KOSTERMANS, A.J.O.H. (1950). The genus Cullenia Wight (Bombacaceae). Rein-wardtia 4: 69 - 74. RAIZADA, M.B. (1957). The genus Cullenia Wight. Ind. Por. 83: 497 - 499. ROBYNS, A. (1970). A revision of the genus Cullenia Wight (Bombacaceae-Durioneae). Bull. Jard. Nat. Belg 40: 241 - 254.

List of Lower Taxa