Evergreen, woody climbers; branches sympodial with circinate woody hooks. Leaves alternate, simple, oblanceolate, entire with scattered minute glandular pits. Flowers regular in lax terminal or lateral panicles. Calyx 5-lobed, imbricate, tube short, adnate to the base of ovary, finally turbinate and adnate to the fruit with lobes unequally enlarged, spreading and membranous. Petals 5, alternate with sepals, imbricate, white or pink. Stamens 5 or 10; filaments short, dilated and connate at base; anthers basifixed, introrse. Ovary half inferior, unilocular with one basal erect anatropous ovule; styles 3, free, articulated to a rounded or shortly cylindric epigynous disk. Fruit a dry indehiscent nut surrounded by spreading sepals. Seeds large with strongly ruminate endosperm.
A monogeneric family confined to Tropical W. Africa, S.E. Asia and S. China, ca 12 species; 4 in India.
Literature. PLANCHON, J.E. (1849). Essai Monographique Dune, Nouvelle Familia de Plantes, Sous le nom D'Ancistrocladus. Ann. Sci. Nat. Bot. ser. 3, 13: 316 - 319. STEENlS, C.G.G.J. VAN (1948). Ancistrociadaceae. Fl. Males. 1, 4: 8 - 10.
Notes. A monogeneric family and is usally placed next to Dipterocarpaceae from which it is distinguished based on unilocular ovary with a basal ovule, seeds with ruminate endosperm, climbing habit, sympodial structure, exstipulate leaves and hooked branches.
A monogeneric family confined to Tropical W. Africa, S.E. Asia and S. China, ca 12 species; 4 in India.
Literature. PLANCHON, J.E. (1849). Essai Monographique Dune, Nouvelle Familia de Plantes, Sous le nom D'Ancistrocladus. Ann. Sci. Nat. Bot. ser. 3, 13: 316 - 319. STEENlS, C.G.G.J. VAN (1948). Ancistrociadaceae. Fl. Males. 1, 4: 8 - 10.
Notes. A monogeneric family and is usally placed next to Dipterocarpaceae from which it is distinguished based on unilocular ovary with a basal ovule, seeds with ruminate endosperm, climbing habit, sympodial structure, exstipulate leaves and hooked branches.
