The Families of Angiosperms

L. Watson and M.J.Dallwitz

Siparunaceae (A. DC.) Schodde

~Monimiaceae.

Habit and leaf form.Small trees,or shrubs, or lianas; bearing essential oils. Conspicuously heterophyllous (inGlossocalyx, where one of each pair is reduced to its midrib), or notconspicuously heterophyllous.Leaves persistent;opposite(decussate); gland-dotted, or not gland-dotted (?); aromatic, or withoutmarked odour; simple. Lamina entire; pinnately veined. Leaves exstipulate.

Leaf anatomy.The leaflamina dorsiventral. Stomata present; paracytic. Hairs present. Complexhairs present, or absent; when present, stellate (or scalelike). Adaxialhypodermis present, or absent. The mesophyll with spherical etherial oil cells;not containing mucilage cells.

Axial (stem, wood) anatomy.Corkcambium present; initially superficial. Nodes unilacunar (with several traces).Primary vascular tissues in a cylinder, without separate bundles; collateral.Internal phloem absent. Cortical bundles absent. Medullary bundles absent.Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring. Primarymedullary rays mixed wide and narrow.

The wood diffuse porous. The vessels small; often in radial multiples. Thevessel end-walls scalariform and simple. The vessels without vestured pits. Theaxial xylem without fibre tracheids; with libriform fibres; without septatefibres. The fibres without spiral thickening. The parenchyma apotracheal toparatracheal. The secondary phloem not stratified. ‘Included’ phloemabsent. The wood not storied.

Reproductive type, pollination.Unisexual flowers present.Plantsmonoecious, ordioecious. Female flowers without staminodes. Gynoecium of male flowersabsent. Pollination entomophilous (by gall insects).

Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seedmorphology.Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; incymes, or in spikes, or in panicles. The ultimate inflorescence units cymose, orracemose. 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 annulardisk (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. Androeciumexclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 2–100 (to ‘many’).Filaments not appendiculate (without nectariferous appendages).Anthersdehiscing by longitudinal valves; introrse; bisporangiate (?). Pollenshed as single grains. Pollen grains nonaperturate.

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

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

Geography, cytology.Paleotropicaland 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 III core angiosperms;Superorder Magnolianae. APG IV Order Laurales (assumed by L.W.).

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

General remarks.See Schodde(1970).Taxon19, 325.

Illustrations.• Siparuna mollis, S. guyanense (as Conuleum), S.reginae, Glossocalyx brevipes and G. longicuspis: Nat. Pflanzenfam. III(1891). • Glossocalyxlongicuspis: Hook. Ic. Pl. 14 (1880).

We advise against extracting comparative informationfrom the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using theDELTA data files or theinteractive key, which allows access to the characterlist, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions,differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lackingspecified attributes, distributions of character states within any set of taxa,geographical distribution, genera included in each family, and classifications(Dahlgren; Dahlgren, Clifford, and Yeo; Cronquist; APG). See alsoGuidelines for using data taken from Web publications.