Family Podoaceae

Podoaceae Baill. ex Franch.

~ Anacardiaceae

Including Podoönaceae Baillon ex Franchet

Habit and leaf form. Shrubs, or herbs; non-laticiferous and without coloured juice. Perennial; when herbaceous, rhizomatous. Leaves alternate, or opposite; long petiolate; non-sheathing; simple. Lamina dissected, or entire; when dissected, palmatifid (trilobed); pinnately veined, or palmately veined; cross-venulate. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins serrate.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers functionally male, or functionally female. Plants dioecious. Female flowers without staminodes (seemingly without trace of an androecium). Gynoecium of male flowers pistillodial to absent.

Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in panicles (thyrses). The ultimate inflorescence unit cymose. Inflorescences terminal; terminal thyrses. Flowers bracteate (male bracts linear or (in Campylopetalum) some of them large, long-stalked, membranous-reticulate and becoming coloured, the female bracts adnate to the pedicels, membranous-reticulate, suborbicular); minute to small; regular. Free hypanthium absent. Hypogynous disk present (in the female flower — representing a vestigial perianth?); annular.

Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla (in male flowers), or absent (in female flowers), or vestigial (if represented by the disk of the female flower); in male flowers, 4, or 5. Calyx 1 whorled; gamosepalous; 4–5 toothed; cupuliform; regular; open in bud. Corolla 4, or 5; 1 whorled; polypetalous; valvate; regular. Petals clawed, or sessile (sometimes elongate-filiform).

Androecium of male flowers, 8, or 10. Androecial members free of the perianth; united with the gynoecium (sometimes, to the base of the rudimentary pistil, when this present), or free of the gynoecium; free of one another. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 8, or 10; diplostemonous. Anthers short, extrorse, or introrse. Pollen grains aperturate; 3 aperturate; colporate.

Gynoecium ostensibly 1 carpelled. Carpels reduced in number relative to the perianth. The pistil 1 celled. Gynoecium monomerous (ostensibly), or syncarpous (presumably peudomonomerous); of one carpel (ostensibly), or eu-syncarpous (i.e. presumably pseudomonomerous); superior. Carpel if treated as monomerous, stylate (the style short or long-filiform, with lateral stigma); 1 ovuled. Placentation basal. Ovary 1 locular; sessile. Gynoecium stylate. Styles 1; apical. Stigmas 1; 1 lobed (simple). Placentation basal. Ovules in the single cavity 1; long funicled; pendulous (from the long, basal funicle); anatropous (?).

Fruit non-fleshy. The fruiting carpel if considered monomerous, indehiscent (lenticular, attached to the midrib of the accrescent bract); an achene. Fruit if treated as syncarpous, indehiscent; achene-like (lenticular, attached to the midrib of the accrescent bract); 1 seeded. Seeds non-endospermic. Embryo well differentiated. Cotyledons 2.

Geography, cytology. Paleotropical. Tropical. Southeast Asia.

Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Crassinucelli. Dahlgren’s Superorder Rutiflorae; Sapindales. Cronquist’s Subclass Rosidae; Sapindales. APG 3 core angiosperms; core eudicot; Superorder Rosanae; malvid; Order Sapindales (as a synonym of Anacardiaceae).

Species 3. Genera 2; Dobinea (Podoön), Campylopetalum.