Botanical Survey of India | Flora of India

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DILLENIACEAE
N.C. Majumdar



Trees, shrubs, climbers or herbs with radical leaves. Leaves simple, alternate or spirally arranged, rarely opposite, entire or dentate, usually with numerous prominent parallel lateral nerves; stipules absent, or ifpresent, wing-like, mostly caducous. Flowers solitary, clustered or in panicles, actinomorphic, bisexual, hypogynous, generally yellow or white. Sepals 5 (4-6), free, imbricate or spirally arranged, persistent, often accrescent, thickened and fleshy in fruit. Petals usually 3 - 5, free, imbricate, often crumpled in bud, caducous. Stamens numerous, rarely 7 - 10, free or basally connate into bundles, centrifugal in development, usually persistent; staminodes often present; filaments thickened apically; anthers 2-locular, basifixeded, oblong, opening by apical pores or longitudinal slits. Carpels 1 - 20, superior, free or somewhat coherent along the central axis; styles free, elongate and divergent; ovules 1 - many, anatropous, campylotropous or amphitropous, on axile placenta. Fruiting carpels dehiscent and follicular or indehis- cent and baccate, enclosed within a subglobose pseudocarp composed of the enlarged somewhat fleshy imbricate sepals. Seeds lor few, arillate or exarillate; testa crustaceous; endosperm copious, fleshy, oily and proteinaceous; embryo minute, linear, straight.

Tropical and subtropical regions of the world, centred in Australia, rare in Africa; 14 genera and ca 400 species, 3 genera and 12 species in India.

Literature. ABEDIN, S. (1973) Dilleniaceae. In: Fl. W. Pakistan 42: 1 - 4. HOOGLAND, R. D. (1951) Dilleniaceae. In: Fl. Males. I, 4: 141 - 174. MAJUMDAR, N. C. (1979) Dilleniaceae. In: Fasc. Fl. India 2: 1 - 16. SASTRY, R.L.N.(1958) Pollen morphology and embryology of some Dilleniaceae. Bot. Notiser 111: 495 - 511.



KEY TO THE GENERA


1a. Herbs, usually stemless, with large radical leaves 1. Acrotrema
b. Trees, shrubs or woody climbers, without radical leaves 2
2a. Trees; flowers solitary or in clusters, white or yellow; stamens with cylindric filaments and parallel locules; receptacle cleal; fruits globose, indehiscent, enclosed by enlarged sepals 2. Dillenia
b. Shrubs or woody climbers; flowers in terminal panicles, white to reddish white; stamens with filaments thickened upwards and obliquely divergent lacules; receptacle flat; fruits of several dehiscent shiny follicles, not enlosed in enlarged calyx 3. Tetracera


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