Daphniphyllaceae

Abstract

Evergreen, glabrous trees or shrubs, dioecious or rarely polygamo-dioecious; branchlets covered with circular or elliptic lenticels. Leaves simple, petiolate, estipulate, alternate, rarely opposite, sometimes fasciculate at the branch-tips and subverticillate, pinnately veined; margin entire, sometimes dentate near the apex. Inflorescences axillary, rarely subterminal, racemiform. Flowers unisexual, regular, hypogynous, apetalous,pedicellate; sepals 0 or 3-6 and then imbricate; stamens 5-14, subsessile or with long filaments; anthers curved (“lunate”)or straight, basifixed, tetrasporangiate, latrorse, opening with valves, commonly with a shortly prolonged connective; pistillodes rarely present in staminate flowers; gynoecium syncarpous of 2(-4)carpels, imperfectly 2(-4)-septate; stylodia short, connate only at the base, divaricate, recurved or circinate, with dry, papillate, decurrent stigmas; ovules (1)2 in each locule, lateral on parietal placentae, pendulous, anatropous, epitropous, bitegmic, crassinucellate. Fruit a 1(2)-seeded drupe; seeds with abundant oily and proteinaceous endosperm and some perisperm; embryo very small, straight, apical. 2 n=32. A monogeneric family with about thirty species distributed from India to Japan and from Central China to New Guinea.