Koilodepas Hassk.

Shrubs or small trees, monoecious or dioecious. Leaves distichous, irregularly dentateserrate along upper margins, pinnately nerved, shortly petiolate; stipules persistent. Inflorescences axillary and terminal, slender interrupted spikes, often crowded or several together, simple or branched, bearing 1 or 2 female flowers at basal nodes and many male flowers in clusters upwards, sometimes entirely male-flowered and the 1 or 2 female flowers arising on short axillary rachis; bracts small. Male flowers: sessile; calyx connate at base into a short cup, split into 4 (or 5) valvate lobes; petals and disc absent; stamens 4 (or 5); filaments thick, dilated and flattened at base and adnate below to the fleshy base of the pistillode into a cup bearing 8 or 10 longitudinal ribs on the inside, free above; anthers introrse, 2-loculed, with spreading and pendulous thecae; pistillode thick and fleshy below, produced above into a stout 3-lobed column. Female flowers: shortly pedicelled; calyx cup-shaped to globose; lobes 5- (- 8), free, imbricate, persistent and greatly enlarged in fruit; petals and disc absent; ovary 3-loculed, each locule 1-ovuled; styles 3, strongly flabellate, widened, bearing numerous lobules along margins. Fruits schizocarpic capsules of 3 bivalved cocci, 3-lobed, encircled by the persistent calyx; stellate pubescent; seeds subglobose, carunculate, maculate.

Tropical SE. Asia, mainly in Malaysia and Indonesia (except Sumatra), one species extending up to Hainan in China, ca 11 species; one in peninsular India.

Literature. AIRY SHAW, H. K. (1960). Notes on Malesian Euphorbiaceae XI. A synopsis of the genus Koilodepas (Coelodepas) Hassk., with a note on Calpigyne frutescens Bl. Kew Bull. 14: 382 - 391.

List of Lower Taxa