Abstract
Aquatic to telmatic perennial, rooted herbs. Leaves simple, spirally arranged, sessile, without a basal sheath, lanceolate to linear or nearly filiform, commonly bidentate apically. Flowers axillary, solitary on short to long pedicels, emergent, actinomorphic, perfect, hypogynous, trimerous, with strongly differentiated calyx and corolla; sepals 3, equal, free, green, valvate to subvalvate; petals 3, equal free, white, imbricate, short-clawed; stamens 3, alternate with the petals; filaments slender, glabrous; anthers basifixed, tetrasporangiate to bisporangiate, opening by apical pores or porelike slits or sometimes by pores at the end of a tubular apical appendage. Ovary unilocular, composed of 3 united carpels, placentation parietal; style simple, terminal; stigma short capitate or slightly trifid. Ovules several to numerous, biseriate on each of the 3 parietal placentas atropous, bitegmic, tenuinucellate. Fruit a loculicidal capsule with 3 lines of dehiscence, each midway between a placenta. Seeds ovoid to globose, striate, operculate; embryo small, globose, undifferentiated, apical; endosperm copious, composed of starch and aleurone. x = 8.
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Stevenson, D.W. (1998). Mayacaceae. In: Kubitzki, K. (eds) Flowering Plants · Monocotyledons. The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-03531-3_32
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