Botanical Survey of India | Flora of India

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OCHNACEAE
B. Safui and M.P. Nayar



Undershrubs, shrubs, or trees with watery juice. Leaves simple, alternate, glabrous, coriaceous; stipules present. Inflorescence terminal, axillary, or on short racemose. cymose, compound or thyrsoid panicles, bracteate. Flowers one to many, regular, bisexual, conspicuous; pedicels articulate. Sepals 4 - 5, free, imbricate, persistent. Petals 4 - 10, free, deciduous, imbricate. Stamens 4 to many, inserted at base of or on disc; filaments usually persistent; anthers basifixed, dehiscing by apical pores or longitudinally. Ovary deeply lobed; carpels 2 - 10, superior, free with 1 ovule or fused with 2 to many ovules per carpel; styles simple, subulate, straight or incurved; stigma simple, terminal, free or fused. Fruits drupes, berries or septicidal capsules; seeds solitary to numerous with or without endosperm.

Tropics and subtropics, mostly in Africa and Asia, 40 genera and 600 species; 3 genera and 7 species in India.

Literature. KANIS(1968). A revision of the Ochnaceae of Indo-Pacific area. Blumea 16(1): 1 - 82.



KEY TO THE GENERA


1a. Flowers in conferted cymose clusters of umbelloid appearance; anthers opening with 2 longitudinal slits 1. Brackenridgea
b. Flowers not in conferted clusters, usually thyrsoid or cymose 2
2a. Leaves with distinct intramarginal nerves; stamens 10 2. Gomphia
b. Leaves without intramarginal nerves; stamens many 3. Ochna


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