Eriolaena DC.

Large, stout shrubs or small trees, herbaceous portions usually stellate-hairy. Leaves simple, or lobed, alternate, usually cordate at base, crenate-serrate, stellate-hairy above, tomentose beneath, 5 - 9-nerved at base; petiolate; stipules caducous. Flowers in 1 - many-flowered peduncled cymes, pedicelled. Involucral bracts 3 - 5, multisect or entire or lobed. Sepals 5, spathaceous at first, ultimately 5-parted; stellate-pubescent. Petals 5, flat with dilated tomentose claws. Stamens many-seriate on long, erect column, usually pubescent; anthers 2-loculed, with locules parallel. Ovary sessile, 5 - 10-loculed; styles erect; stigmas 8 - 10-lobed or more, revolute. Capsules woody, loculicidally valved, beaked at the apex. Seeds many, winged at the apex, endosperm scanty; cotyledons plaited or contruplicate.

Exclusively in Asia (China and India), ca 8 species; 7 in India.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Involucral bracts multisect or laciniate

2

b. Involucral bracts entire or nearly so

6

2a. Involucral bracts near the sepals

3

b. Involucral bracts at a distance-From the sepals

3. Eriolaena lushingtonii

3a. Peduncles 1 or 3-flowered

4

b. Peduncles many-flowered

5

4a. Peduncles 1-flowered, shorter than the leaves

7. Eriolaena wallichii

b. Peduncles 3-flowered, longer than the leaves

6. Eriolaeoa stocksii

5a. Styles glabrous; valves keeled or rounded, villous or glabrous in capsules

1. Eriolaena candollei

b. Styles pubescent; valves tubercled or pitted in capsules

2. Eriolaena hookeriana

6a. Leaves ovate, scabrid above

5. Eriolaena spectabilis

b. Leaves roundish, thinly stellate-hairy

4. Eriolaena quinquelocularis

List of Lower Taxa