Flueggea Willd.

Shrubs or trees, dioecious, rarely monoecious. Leaves mostly deciduous, alternate, shortpetioled, stipulate, entire, penninerved. Inflorescences axillary, solitary or fasciculateglomerulate; bracts minute. Male flowers: long pedicellate; sepals 4 - 7, imbricate; petals absent; disc glands 4 - 7, sometimes connate; stamens 4 - 7, free; anthers extrorse, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen grains subglobose, 3-colporate, semitectate; pistillode trifid at apex or rarely absent. Female flowers: pedicels terete or angled; sepals 4 - 7, imbricate; petals absent; disc annular, sometimes thickened, entire or variously lobed or angled; ovary (2 -) 3 (- 4)-locular; locules biovulate; ovules hemitropous; styles usually 3, free, bifid with dilated branches above. Fruits capsular and dehiscent into 3 cocci or baccate and indehiscent; columella persistent; seeds 2 per locule; testa thin, crustaceous, smooth to reticulate or verruculose, sometimes ventrally invaginated at hilum; endosperm copious; embryo straight or curved; cotyledons broader and longer than radicle.

Tropical and temperate Asia, ca 15 species; 2 species in India.

Literature. WEBSTER, G. L. (1984). A revision of Flueggea (Euphorbiaceae). Allertonia 3: 259 - 312.

KEY TO THE SPECIES

1a. Branches terete or obtusely angled, tapering to spinose at tips; leaf-blade rounded or subcordate at apex; stipules 0.5 - 1 mm long; female flowers solitary or 2 or 3 per glomerule; carpels 2 or 3

1. Flueggea leucopyrus

b. Branches especially young ones sharply angled, usually not spinose at tips; leafblade obtuse to acute at apex; stipules 1.5 - 3 mm long; female flowers 3 - 10 per glomerule; carpels always 3

2. Flueggea virosa

List of Lower Taxa