Elachyptera A.C.Sm.

Lianas or slender trees with scandent branches, glabrous throughout or nearly so, the branches terete. Leaves opposite or subopposite, petiolate, stipulate. Inflores-cences axillary or terminal, many-flowered, paniculate-corymbose, copiously branched, the peduncle and branchlets quadrangular. Flowers hermaphrodite, very small, pedicellate; sepals 5, usually broader than long, rounded at the apex; petals 5, imbricate, suberect, entire to erosulous at the margins, thin-carnose; disc continu-ous, erect, inconspicuous, short-cylindric, often thickened at the margin, carnose or thin-carnose; stamens 3, suberect, the filaments ligulate, the anthers extrorsely nutant, transversely ellipsoid, dehiscing by apical, transversal clefts; pollen grains simple; ovary 3-lobed, 3-celled, each cell 2-or 4-ovulate, the ovules collateral or in superposed pairs, ascending from the inner basal angle; style short, the stigma capitate or 3-lobed, the lobes inconspicuous and opposite the stamens. Fruits of 3 capsular mericarps (2 mericarps often abortive), these divergent, separately attached to a slightly swollen receptacle, short-stipitate, nearly flattened or slightly convex on both surfaces, dehiscing along an inconspicuous median suture, the pericarp papyraceous or thin-coriaceous; seeds 1-4 per mericarp, affixed by a very short basal wing, the wing papyraceous or thin-coriaceous, extended distally into a flange (sometimes greatly expanded) along the inner margin of the embryoniferous por-tion; cotyledons united.