60. Hymenocardia Wall. ex Lindl.

Dioecious shrubs or trees with simple hairs and sessile glands. Leaves alternate, petiolate, stipulate, entire, penninerved or weakly trinerved at base. Male inflorescences axillary, catkinlike. Flowers: sessile; calyx cupular, irregularly 4 - 6-lobed or -partite; petals absent; disc absent; stamens 4 - 5; filaments included, free or shortly united below; anthers large, at first reflexed, later horizontal; thecae parallel, longitudinally dehiscent; connectives broad; pollen grains porate; pistillode columnar, often bifid at apex. Female inflorescences axillary, racemiform, 2 - 5-flowered; bracts persistent, becoming foliaceous in fruit. Flowers: shortly pedicellate; sepals 5, caducous; petals absent, disc absent; ovary 2-locular, flattened at right angles to the septum; locules biovulate; ovules anatropous; styles 2, elongated, subterete, free, entire or lacerate, papillose all over. Fruits capsular, flat, consisting of 2 compressed very broad winglike cocci, separating from central axis; pericarp crustaceous; endocarp membranous; seeds usually solitary in each coccus, flat; testa thin; endosperm scanty; cotyledons very thin, broad and flat; rachis long.

Old World tropics, Africa, India to SE. Asia, particularly Malay Peninsula and Sumatra, ca 6 species; one in India.

List of Lower Taxa