Caryocaraceae
Trees or shrubs. Leaves trifoliolate, opposite or alternate, the margins of the leaflets serrate, dentate or crenate or rarely entire, often with stipels at base of leaflets; stipules 2–4, usually caducous, or 0. Inflorescences of terminal racemes; pedice
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G.T. P R A N C E
Trees or shrubs. Leaves trifoliolate, opposite or alternate, the margins of the leaflets serrate, dentate or crenate or rarely entire, often with stipels at base of leaflets; stipules 2–4, usually caducous, or 0. Inflorescences of terminal racemes; pedicels articulated. Flowers large, hermaphrodite, actinomorphic; sepals 5(6), imbricate; petals 5(6), imbricate, caducous, distinct or rarely slightly connate at base or connate at apex to form a calyptra in Anthodiscus; stamens numerous, 55–750; filaments usually connate in a ring at the base, long and slender and usually with some much shorter sterile interior ones which are often recurved, apical portion with numerous vesicles, the sterile filaments often with spirally arranged vesicles along entire length, or the filaments with a row of sterile staminodes at base of interior; anthers basifixed or attached at middle, bilocular; the stamens frequently caducous as a unit together with the petals after pollination; ovary compound, superior, 4(–6)-carpellate in Caryocar and 8–20-carpellate in Anthodiscus, with as many stylodia as carpels (a common style being absent), each with a distal punctiform stigma; the carpels unilocular each with a single ovule; the ovules basal, erect, anatropous or atropous, bitegmic or unitegmic. Fruit a drupe, with 1–4 seeds developing in Caryocar or 8–20 in Anthodiscus; mesocarp indehiscent, usually fatty or fleshy; endocarp hard and woody, muricate, tuberculate or spinulose on outer surface, eventually splitting into 1-seeded pyrenes or mericarps. Seeds often reniform, endosperm thin or lacking, the embryo with a straight, arcuate or spirally twisted radicle, a fleshy hypocotyle, and two small cotyledons. Two genera and 27 spp., in the American tropics from Costa Rica to southern Brazil but not native to the West Indies. A N A T O M Y A N D M O R P H O L O G Y . A summary of anatomical features with an emphasis on leaf
structure is given in Prance and Silva (1973). Brochidodromous and camptodromous nervation are the usual patterns, although Anthodiscus trifoliatus is hyphodromous. Branched sclerenchymatous idioblasts are present in the leaf mesophyll and petioles of both genera. The palisade cells frequently contain crystals. Stomata are confined to the abaxial leaf surface, and are usually anomocytic and occasionally either anisocytic or paracytic. The wood of Anthodiscus can easily be distinguished from that of Caryocar by the greater abundance (15/sq. mm) of vessels (3/sq. mm in Caryocar), the quantity of gum deposits in the ray cells, and the fibers without septa. The vessels of Caryocar vary from 74–577 mm in tangential diameter and are solitary or in radial multiples of 2–5 cells. The vessels of Anthodiscus have 50–100 mm mean tangential diameter and are solitary or in multiples of 2–6 cells. Wood of Caryocar is described in Barghoorn and Renteria (1967), Loureiro and Silva (1968), Mello (1970) and Arau´jo and Mattos Filho (1973). F L O R A L S T R U C T U R E . In Anthodiscus the five petals fall as a unit, where
