Family Siparunaceae

Siparunaceae (A. DC.) Schodde

~ Monimiaceae

Habit and leaf form. Trees; bearing essential oils. Leaves evergreen; opposite (decussate); gland-dotted, or not gland-dotted (?); aromatic, or without marked odour; simple. Lamina entire; pinnately veined. Leaves exstipulate.

Leaf anatomy. Stomata present; paracytic. Hairs present. Complex hairs present, or absent; when present, stellate (or scalelike).

Adaxial hypodermis absent. Lamina dorsiventral. The mesophyll with spherical etherial oil cells.

Stem anatomy. Cork cambium present; initially superficial. Nodes unilacunar (with several traces). Cortical bundles absent. Medullary bundles absent. Internal phloem absent. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring. ‘Included’ phloem absent. Xylem without fibre tracheids; with libriform fibres (the fibres non-septate). Vessel end-walls simple, or scalariform and simple. Primary medullary rays mixed wide and narrow. Wood parenchyma apotracheal.

Reproductive type, pollination. Fertile flowers functionally male, or functionally female. Plants monoecious, or dioecious. Female flowers without staminodes. Gynoecium of male flowers absent.

Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in cymes, or in spikes, or in panicles. The ultimate inflorescence unit cymose, or racemose. Inflorescences axillary (usually), or terminal (rarely); ‘cymose, clustered or spikelike’ (Schodde 1970). Flowers regular to very irregular. Free hypanthium present.

Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla, or sepaline, or of ‘tepals’ (depending on iterpretation); 4–8; joined (‘sometimes almost entirely connate into a calyptra or a flat, oblique, lanceolate tongue, usually united and intruded below into an interior annular disk (velum) around the androecium or gynoecium’); 1–2 whorled (valvate within the series); isomerous, or anisomerous; sepaloid.

Androecium in male flowers, 2–100 (to ‘many’). Androecial members free of the perianth; free of one another. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 2–100 (to ‘many’). Filaments not appendiculate (without nectariferous appendages). Anthers dehiscing by longitudinal valves; introrse; bisporangiate (?). Pollen shed as single grains. Pollen grains nonaperturate.

Gynoecium 4–100 carpelled (to ‘many’); apocarpous, or syncarpous; eu-apocarpous; partly inferior (the carpels embedded in the hypanthium wall and disk). Carpel stylate (the style elongate); 1 ovuled. Placentation basal. Ovules ascending; arillate; anatropous; unitegmic; crassinucellate.

Fruit fleshy; an aggregate. The fruiting carpel indehiscent; drupaceous. Fruit enclosed in the fleshy hypanthium (i.e the drupaceous carpels usually permanently enclosed by or embedded in the walls of the enlarged, baccate hypanthium). Seeds endospermic. Endosperm not oily. Cotyledons 2.

Geography, cytology. Paleotropical and Neotropical. Tropical. Tropical America, West Indies, West Africa, Asia. X = 22.

Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Crassinucelli. Dahlgren’s Superorder Magnoliiflorae; Laurales. Cronquist’s Subclass Magnoliidae; Laurales. APG 3 core angiosperms; Superorder Magnolianae; Order Laurales (assumed by L.W.).

Species 160. Genera 3; Siparuna, Bracteanthus, Glossocalyx.

Schodde (1970). Taxon 19, 325.