| Aphloia | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Aphloia theiformis at theManie van der Schijff Botanical Garden, South Africa | |
Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| Clade: | Tracheophytes |
| Clade: | Angiosperms |
| Clade: | Eudicots |
| Clade: | Rosids |
| Order: | Crossosomatales |
| Family: | Aphloiaceae Takht. |
| Genus: | Aphloia Benn. |
| Species: | A. theiformis |
| Binomial name | |
| Aphloia theiformis (Vahl) Benn. | |
| Synonyms[1] | |
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Aphloia is a genus of flowering plants that contains a single species,Aphloia theiformis, the sole species of the monogeneric familyAphloiaceae. It is a species of evergreen shrubs or small trees occurring inEast Africa,Madagascar, theMascarene Islands and theSeychelles.
The genusAphloia was described byJohn Joseph Bennett in 1840 and included inFlacourtiaceae, where most authors continued to include it untilArmen Takhtajan recognized its misplacement and created the new family Aphloiaceae inViolales to accommodate it. In 2003 theAPG II system included Aphloiaceae in theRosids without specifying an order. Matthews & Endress (2005) and Stevens (2006) include the family in an enlarged orderCrossosomatales. TheAPG III system of 2009 followed suit and includes Aphloiaceae within the Crossosomatales.[2]
Aphloia theiformis is anevergreen shrub or small tree reaching up to 10 m (33 ft) high. Young branches are hairless, brown in colour, have stripes along their length and wings extending from the nodes, narrowing downwards and carries alternately set leaves in two rows. The blades of the leaves are elliptic in shape, 3–8 cm (1.2–3.1 in) long, 1–3 cm (0.39–1.18 in) wide, with a pointy or rounded tip, a (broad) wedge-shaped foot and a saw-toothed edge, particularly in from below midlength to the tip. There are some ten pairs of inconspicuous, papery and hairless side veins. The leaf stalks (orpetioles) are 2–4 mm (0.079–0.157 in) long. The flowers are with one, two or three together in the axils of the leaves on up to 2 cm (0.79 in) long greenish stalks (orpedicels), which also carry bracts of up to 1.8 mm (0.071 in) long that are split in three lobes. The individual flowers have an undifferentiatedperianth that consists of four or five, rarely six, slightly leathery, white, later yellowish, oval to round, concavetepals of 2½-3½ mm (0.10–0.14 in) in diameter, interlocked with each other at their foot. The manystamens consist of 3 mm (0.12 in) long hairless filaments topped with round anthers of 0.7 mm (0.028 in) in diameter. Theovary consists of one carpel, is oval in shape and 3–4 mm (0.12–0.16 in) long, sits sometimes on a short stalk (a state called stipitate), and is topped by a shield-shapedstigma with a groove, set on a very short style. When ripe, the ovary develops into a fleshy white berry of about 8 mm (0.31 in) in diameter with the stigma still present, that contains about ten roundish, slightly compressed seeds of 2½–3 mm (0.10–0.14 in).[3][4][5]
