Pachira Aubl.

Trees, evergreen, unarmed, the trunk sometimes buttressed. Leaves petiolate, the stipules lanceolate, the blade compound-digitate, the leaflets 5-9, articulate, ses-sile or petiolulate, entire or sometimes undulate, the margins sometimes more or less recurved. Flowers grouped toward the end of the branchlets, solitary or geminate, sometimes 3-nate, hermaphrodite, actinomorphous, up to 35 cm. long, pedicellate, 3-bracteolate, the bractlets fugacious; receptacle generally glandular; calyx broadly cupuliform, campanulate to subtubiform, truncate or undulate, coriaceous, per-sistent; petals 5, ribboned, adnate to the base of the staminal column, fleshy, with tufted hairs on both sides, fugacious; stamens 200-700, apparently 2-whorled, more or less long-monadelphous, the anthers 1-thecate, oblong-linear, straight or curved, submedifixus, extrorse, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen colp(or)ate, the sexine of the walls reticulate and provided with baculate or spinulate, suprategillate elements, that of the mesocolpia sometimes echinulate; ovary superior, sessile, 5-celled, the cells many-ovulate, the ovules inserted on a central columella; style filiform; stigma 5-lobulate. Capsules ligneous, large, loculicidally 5-valvate, tufted-pubescent out-side, pubescent and with simple hairs inside, the central columella w inged and per-sistent; seeds few, very large and angular; cotyledons epigeal, surrounded by the testa and appressed against the ground level, alternate, sessile, quite unequal, very fleshy and green, the epicotyl provided with triangular cataphylls, the primordial leaves compound-digitate.