Luvunga Buch.-Ham. ex Wight & Arn.

Lianas, armed with axillary, retrorse or recurved spines. Leaves alternate, digitately trifoliolate, unifoliolate on seedlings and juvenile shoots; petioles pulvanoid, articulate at both ends; leaflets on short petiolules, entire along margins, revolute on drying, coriaceous, glandular-punctate. Inflorescences axillary, racemose or paniculate. Flowers 4- or 5-merous, oblong or subglobose in bud. Calyx cupular, entire or with 3 - 5 deltate sepals. Petals 3 - 5, linear-oblong or lanceolate, thick, fleshy, imbricate, soon caducous. Stamens 8 - 10, rarely less, free or connate; anthers linear-oblong, obtuse or slightly apiculate, dorsifixed. Ovary long-ovoid, seated on a thick, fleshy, columnar gynophore, 2 - 4-locular; each locule with 2 collateral or superimposed ovules; style continuous with the ovary, cylindric, long, thick, caducous; stigma obtuse or capitate. Fruits ellipsoid or globose berries with thick densely glandular or pustular pericarp; pulp mucilaginous; without vesicles; seeds 1 - 3, ovoid, light greenish, embedded in mucilaginous matter.

Tropical and subtropical regions of India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Indo-china, Malesia, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, Philippines and New Guinea; ca 12 species, 2 in India.

Literature. STONE, B.C.(1985). New and noteworthy paleotropical species of Rutaceae. Proc. Acad. Sci. Philadephia 137: 213 - 228.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Flowers subglobose in bud, 5 - 10 mm long; calyx puberulent; stamens free

1. Luvunga eleutherandra

b. Flowers ovoid-oblong in bud, 12 - 15 mm long; calyx glabrous with ciliolate sepals; stamens connate at base

2. Luvunga scandens

List of Lower Taxa