Ventilago Gaertner

Scandent or climbing shrubs; branches slender, striate; branchlets often zig-zag, stout. Leaves alternate, simple, coriaceous, secondary nerves ascending, converging along the margin; stipules minute. Inflorescence axillary or terminal, umbellate cymes, fascicled or in panicles. Flowers bisexual, pedicellate. Calyx lobes 5, keeled with a hard incurved point at apex within, puberulous outside; tube obconical. Petals 5, cucullate. membranous, truncate, obcordate, clawed at the base. Stamens 5, opposite to and enclosed by petals, adnate to their bases; filaments filiform; anthers dorsifixed, introrse. Disc thick, filling the calyx tube, 5-lobed or angled, adanate to the lower half of the ovary. Ovary more or less sunk in the disc; style hairy at base, with two short stigmatic lobes. Samara 1-seeded, indehiscent, the basal seed chamber thinly double walled, prolonged above into a linear or linear-oblong, coriaceous wing; median line on wings single or double. Seeds globose to subglobose; testa membranaous; exalbuminous; cotyledons thick, fleshy; radicle very short.

Indo-Malayan region, Polynesian Islands, Australia and Madagascar; ea 70 species, 4 in India.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Calyx tube saucer-like, adnate only to the base of the fruit

2

b. Calyx tube cup-like, adnate to the lower part of the fruit

3

2a. Branches slender, pale; panicles minutely grey pubescent; wing grey, puberulous

4. Ventilago madraspatana

b. Branches stout, dark; panicles golden vilous; wing brown, tomentose

2. Ventilago gamblei

3a. Leaves ovate to ovate-elliptic. usually unequally rounded at base; disc villous; fruit girt up to more than middle by the calyx tube

1. Ventilago denticulata

b. Leaves oblong-lanceolate, attenuate at base; disc glabrous; fruit girt up to one-third portion by the calyx tube

3. Ventilago goughii

List of Lower Taxa