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Alternatively Aphloiaceae Takht.; ~ Flacourtiaceae.
Habit and leaf form. Evergreen trees and shrubs. Leaves persistent; alternate (sometimes turning blue on drying); distichous; leathery; petiolate to subsessile; non-sheathing; simple. Lamina entire; pinnately veined; attenuate to the base. Leaves stipulate. Stipules small, caducous. Lamina margins usually serrate.
Leaf anatomy. Stomata present; anisocytic.
Axial (stem, wood) anatomy. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring.
Reproductive type, pollination. Unisexual flowers absent. Plants hermaphrodite.
Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in racemes, or in fascicles. Inflorescences axillary; in few-flowered fascicles or racemes. Flowers bracteate (the bracts minute scales); regular; partially acyclic (the perianth). Hypogynous disk present; intrastaminal.
Perianth sequentially intergrading from sepals to petals, or sepaline (the inner members more or less petaloid); spirally arranged, 4–5(–6); sepaloid to petaloid; green (-ish); persistent. Calyx 4–5(–6); polysepalous; much imbricate.
Androecium 30–100 (‘many’). Androecial members unbranched; maturing centrifugally; free of the perianth; free of one another. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 30–100 (‘many’); polystemonous; filantherous (the filaments filiform, persistent). Anthers small, basifixed; dehiscing via longitudinal slits; latrorse. Pollen grains aperturate; 3 aperturate; colpate (?).
Gynoecium seemingly 1 carpelled. The pistil 1 celled. Gynoecium seemingly monomerous; seemingly of one carpel; superior. Carpel non-stylate (with a sessile stigma); apically stigmatic (the large stigma peltate or bilobed-capitate); 2–10 ovuled (? — ‘few’). Placentation marginal. Ovules biseriate; more or less campylotropous.
Fruit fleshy. The fruiting carpel indehiscent; baccate (white). Seeds sparsely endospermic. Embryo well differentiated. Embryo curved (horseshoe-shaped).
Geography, cytology. Paleotropical. Tropical. Tropical East Africa, Madagascar, Mascarene Is.
Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Crassinucelli. Dahlgren’s Superorder Violiflorae; Violales. Cronquist’s Subclass Dilleniidae; Violales. APG III core angiosperms; core eudicot; Superorder Rosanae; malvid. APG IV Order Crossosomatales.
Species 1–2 (Aphloia theiformis, A. minima - polymorphic). Genera 1; only genus, Aphloia.
General remarks. A very incomplete description. APG (1998) employ the name Aphloiaceae.
Illustrations. • Aphloia theiformis, as Neumannia: Engler, Veg. der Erde (1910). • Aphloia theiformis subsp. madagascariensis: Humbert, Flora Madagascariensis (1946). • Aphloia: Sketched flowering sprays and technical details.
We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified 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 also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.
Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 1992 onwards. The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. Version: 3rd September 2025. delta-intkey.com’.
