Dioecious, slender trees or shrubs, ± horizontally branching. Leaves spirally arranged, entire, penninerved; petiole yellow and always characteristically transversely wrinkled. Inflorescences axillary, often from defoliate parts of the branch-lets, rarely from trunk. Flowers sessile or very shortly pedicelled, subtended by 1 or 2 bracts, collected to interrupted, solitary or fascicled, sometimes elongate spikes, or congested to axillary fascicles or glomerules. Calyx small, deeply imbricately 5-lobed, persistent. Petals 5, valvate in bud, either united up to the lower half and cup-like spreading, or connate more highly and forming a tube, tips inflexed, slightly keeled and sometimes papillose inside. ♂ Flowers: Stamens 5; filaments adnate to the petals except at tips; anther cells oblong-elliptic, introrse, dorsifixed. Rudiment of ovary hairy, on a thin glabrous disk. ♀ Flowers: Stamens 5, rudimentary. Ovary sessile; style short-conical; stigma rather large or small, pad-like or capitate, oblique, unilaterally incised or subbilobed. Disk thin-coriaceous, crenulate, sometimes inconspicuous. Drupe subglobose to ellipsoid-oblongoid, sometimes obtusely 3 (or sub-5)-angular, with few to numerous longitudinal ribs; exocarp either thick and predominantly spongious, showing but a few fibres, or thinner and with more numerous fibres; endocarp either hard and with numerous longitudinal ± sharp crests, and ± alveolate besides, or thinner and but shallowly crested or ridged, whether or not with an inner lateral longitudinal swelling mainly in the lower part, which houses a small roundish abortive loculus. Seed 1, with a thin testa; endosperm copious, much corrugate-lobular or ruminate; embryo thin, with 2 foliaceous lanceolate cytoledons.
In the understorey of lowland and montane, primary and occasionally secondary forest, rarely in swamp forest or mangrove, from sea-level up to 1220 m.Fl.fr. Jan.-Dec.The drupes seem to be able to float, which may contribute to their dispersal.
Home