Botanical Survey of India | Flora of India

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HIPPOCRATEACEAE
K. Ramamurthy and B.D. Naithani



Small trees or erect or scan dent shrubs, mostly glabrous. Leaves opposite, rarely alternate, simple; stipules caducous or none. Inflorescence axillary, in panicled cymes, sometimes in umbellate clusters; bracts triangular-ovate; bracteoles sometimes in clusters. Flowers bisexual, regular, mostly quite small; disc conical, cupular, thick or expanded. Sepals 5, rarely 2 or 3, minute, ovate, imbricate, united at the base. Petals 5, rarely 2, free, spreading or erect, imbricate, rarely subvalvate. Stamens 3, rarely 2 - 5, inserted on the top of disc, alternate with petals; filaments flat, connate at base; anthers extrorse, rarely introrse, transversely dehiscent; pollen grains binucleate, tricolporate. Ovary superior, triangular, tricarpellary, rarely 2 or 5-carpellary; locules as many as the carpels, placentation axile; style terminal, subulate; stigmas as many as carpels; ovules 2 - 10 in each locule. Fruit 1 - 3 loculed drupe, berry or capsule. Seeds compressed often winged or angular, without endosperm; cotyledons large, connate, thick.

Tropical America, Africa, S.E. Asia and Australia; 3 genera and 223 species, 3 genera and 32 species in India.

Literature. BULLOCK, A.A. (1958) Nomina Familiarum Conservanda Proposita. Taxon 7: 175. DING HOU (1963) Blumea 12 (I): 32-33. DING HOU (1963) Fl. Males., Ser. 1, 6: 389-449. SMITH, A.C. (1940) Revision of New World Hippocrateaceae. Brittonia 3: 341-555. SMITH. A.C. (1945) Notes on Hippocrateaceae in Southern Asia. J. Arn. Arb. 26: 169-179.



KEY TO THE GENERA


1a. Fruits drupaceous, indehiscent; seeds wingless; flowers usually in fascicles 3. Salacia
b. Fruits capsular. dehiscent; seeds winged; flowers in cymes or panicles 2
2a. Disc inconspicuous; inflorescence with supplementary branchlets 2. Reissantia
b. Disc conspicuous; inflorescence without supplementary branchlets 1. Loeseneriella


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