Physenaceae

Abstract

Shrubs or small to medium-sized trees. Leaves alternate, simple, margins entire; stipules and trichomes absent. Flowers in axillary racemes, unisexual, actinomorphic, hypogynous; staminate flowers with rudimentary gynoecium; sepals 5–9, imbricate, connate at the very base, persistent in fruit, covered internally with multicellular, uniseriate, unbranched trichomes; petals none; stamens (8−)10–14(−25), distinct or some filaments shortly united in a single whorl; filaments short; anther elongated, basifixed; thecae bisporangiate, latrorse, opening by slits; gynoecium 2-carpellate, syncarpous; style lacking; stylodia 2, very long (3 mm), arising from a depression at top of ovary; stylodia surrounded by delicate, fibrillar appendages around entire length; ovules campylotropous, bitegmic, weakly crassinucellate, on long, upward-directed funicles inserted on axile placentae, 2 per locule. Fruit stalked, indehiscent, inflated, single-seeded, with a tough, dry wall; seeds with straight embryo, 2 cotyledons of unequal size; endosperm absent.