Family Montiniaceae

Montiniaceae (Engl.) Nak.

~ Grossulariaceae

Habit and leaf form. Small trees, or shrubs. Plants non-succulent. Leaves alternate to opposite; non-sheathing; simple. Lamina entire. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins entire.

Stem anatomy. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring (?). Xylem with fibre tracheids.

Reproductive type, pollination. Plants dioecious. Gynoecium of male flowers vestigial (minute), or absent.

Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers solitary (female), or aggregated in ‘inflorescences’ (male); when solitary and female, terminal; when male, in cymes, or in corymbs. The ultimate inflorescence unit cymose. Inflorescences terminal, or axillary; the males in few-flowered, corymbose terminal or axillary cymes. Flowers regular; 4–5 merous; cyclic. Free hypanthium absent.

Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 6–10 (male flowers), or 8–10 (female flowers); 2 whorled; isomerous. Calyx 3–5 (male flowers), or 4–5 (female flowers); 1 whorled; gamosepalous; 3–5 blunt-lobed (male flowers), or toothed (minutely, in female flowers), or entire (sometimes, in both male and female flowers); cupuliform (and sometimes flattened, in male flowers), or tubular (shortly, in female flowers); open in bud (?). Corolla 3–5 (male flowers), or 4–5 (female flowers); 1 whorled; polypetalous; imbricate; regular; at least somewhat fleshy; deciduous.

Androecium 3–5. Androecial members free of the perianth; free of one another; 1 whorled. Androecium in male flowers exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 3–5; isomerous with the perianth; oppositisepalous; filantherous (the filaments short and thick, the anthers rather large, ellipsoid). Anthers dorsifixed (despite being extrorse); non-versatile; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; extrorse. Pollen grains aperturate; 3(–4) aperturate; colporate (or irregularly 3–4 aperturate).

Gynoecium 2 carpelled. Carpels reduced in number relative to the perianth. The pistil 2 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; synstylovarious; inferior. Ovary 2 locular. Epigynous disk present (in female flowers, fleshy and four-angled). Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1; apical; shorter than the ovary (thick, persistent). Stigmas 2 (these large); commissural (in Kaliphora, which may belong here), or dorsal to the carpels (?). Placentation axile. Ovules 2–6 per locule; pendulous to ascending; superposed, or biseriate; anatropous.

Fruit non-fleshy; dehiscent, or indehiscent; a capsule, or capsular-indehiscent. Capsules when dehiscent, loculicidal. Seeds copiously endospermic, or non-endospermic; winged (and compressed), or wingless (subglobose).

Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar.

Physiology, biochemistry. Iridoids detected; ‘Route I’ type (normal). Proanthocyanidins present.

Geography, cytology. Paleotropical. Sub-tropical to tropical. Southwest and tropical East Africa, Madagascar.

Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Tenuinucelli (?). Dahlgren’s Superorder Corniflorae; Cornales. Cronquist’s Subclass Rosidae; Rosales. APG 3 core angiosperms; core eudicot; Superorder Asteranae; lamiid; Order Solanales.

Species 4. Genera 2, or 3; Grevea, Montinia (and Kaliphora?).

This description very thin.