Crateva L.

Small to medium-sized trees, facultatively shortly deciduous and then flowering when bare; glabrous. Branchlets terete with distinct leaf-scars. Stipules small, caducous. Leaves 3-foliolate, the top of the long petiole sometimes bearing glandlike appendages on the upper surface. Leaflets sessile to shortly stalked, the lateral ones basiscopically asymmetrical, sometimes with more or less distinct pellucid dots. Raceme terminal, corymbiform, either with arrested growth or growing through and developing into a leafy twig with lateral flowers. Flowers sustained by bracts, rarely by leaves, pedicelled, opening at a very early stage of development, floral parts not persistent. Bracts stipulate. Receptacle wide; disk dish-shaped and incurved. Sepals equal, ovate-spathulate, green. Petals equal, unguiculate, more or less ovate to rhomboid with narrowed base, first white, later cream-coloured, the lower (anterior) pair tending to take a transversal (horizontal) position. Stamens (8-)12-30, filaments at the very base connate with the gynophore, long, filiform, spreading. Gynophore approximately as long as the stamens. Ovary 1-locular, the 2 placentas sometimes intruding to about halfway the lumen but not coalescent. Stigma conspicuous, flat, soon after anthesis obsolete. In fruit pedicel, torus and gynophore woody and more or less thickened, the last with a whorl of filament-scars near the base; the gynophore mostly not stretching. Berry large, 1-celled, with tough, sometimes papillate skin. Seeds densely packed; embedded in pulp, horseshoe-shaped, smooth or crested, one cotyledon larger, curved round the other.

Mostly in periodically inundated lowland forest near rivers, below 700 m. In dry regions shortly deciduous, the flowers then appearing simultaneously with the flush. Also cultivated for ornamental purposes and presumably occasionally introduced.