Entry From
Flora of Tropical East Africa, page 1, Author: MARTIN CHEEK AND LAURENCE DORR
Information
Monoecious or polygamous, evergreen or deciduous trees and shrubs, rarely herbs or climbers. Indumentum stellate, often mixed with simple hairs, rarely with peltate-lepidote scales. Stems sometimes exuding mucilage when wounded, fibrous. Leaves alternate, simple, elliptic to oblanceolate or ± orbicular and then often digitately lobed, venation palmate or pinnate, reticulate; petiole usually swollen and often kneed at base and apex. Stipules linear to lanceolate, usually caducous. Flowers actinomorphic, hypogynous, bisexual, perianth biseriate, calyx 5-lobed or of 5 free sepals (spathaceous in Mansonia) valvate. Corolla imbricate, with 5 free often clawed petals, or (genera 1–6) flowers unisexual, perianth uniseriate, the perianth 5-lobed, valvate. Androgynophore well-developed, inconspicuous or absent; androecium uniseriate, stamens (4–)5–20, all fertile or with some filiform staminodes, the filaments united into a long or short tube, or free or, (genera 1–6) anthers subsessile in a ± globose head on an androgynophore; less usually androecium biseriate, the inner whorl being staminodes, usually petaloid, the outer whorl fertile. Anthers dithecal, dehiscing by slits, rarely by apical pores, extrorse. Gynoecium syncarpous, locules (1–)5, placentation axile, ovules 2–numerous or apocarpous (genera 1–7), carpels 5(–numerous, then spiralled) cohering, separating in fruit; styles as many as carpels, cohering and appearing single, with 3–5 apical branches. Fruit syncarpous, then loculicidally, rarely septicidally (Byttneria) dehiscent, rarely indehiscent and then berry-like (Theobroma), if apocarpous, the fruitlets ventrally dehiscent along the placenta, then woody or leathery; or indehiscent and fleshy, leathery or papery. Seeds 1-numerous, rarely winged or arillate, endosperm present or absent, cotyledons flat or folded, thin or fleshy.
Notes
The ‘core’ families of Malvales have traditionally been delimited as follows: 1. Stamens monothecal 2; Stamens dithecal 3; 2. Herbs and shrubs, very rarely trees, not spiny; pollen spiny Malvaceae; Trees, often spiny; pollen usually smooth Bombacaceae; 3. Stamens usually numerous, in multiple whorls; staminodes usually absent Tiliaceae; Stamens 5–20 in a single whorl, often including staminodes, or in two whorls, the inner staminodal often petaloid, the outer all fertile Sterculiaceae. The division of Sterculiaceae from Tiliaceae using this division has long been problematic, as illustrated by Hutchinson’s provision of a key to the genera of the combined families (Hutchinson 1967, The Genera of Flowering Plants 2). Recent molecular work (e.g. Baum et al., Harvard Pap. Bot. 3: 315–330 (1998) and Bayer et al., Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 129: 267–303 (1999)) has shown that some groups of traditional Sterculiaceae are undoubtedly more closely related to some parts of traditional Tiliaceae than they are to the rest of the family. While Malvaceae and Bombacaceae can be maintained ± in the traditional sense (although Durio and its SE Asian relatives require removal from the last), there is no doubt that this is not feasible regarding Tiliaceae and Sterculiaceae, which need to be broken up into several units, all of which are morphologically distinct and have previously been recognised as families. Core Malvales can thus be expanded from the traditional four to ten newly circumscribed families. So far as FTEA is concerned these are as follows: Brownlowiaceae (Christiana and Carpodiptera, earlier published in FTEA Tiliaceae, 2001); Sparrmanniaceae (the rest of the genera in FTEA Tiliaceae, 2001); Bombacaceae (as published in FTEA Bombacaceae, 1989); Malvaceae (in preparation for FTEA); Sterculiaceae (genera 1–6 of this volume); Helicteraceae (genus 7); Pentapetaceae (genera 8–11); Byttneriaceae (genera 12–16). An alternative approach is to unite all these families in a ‘Super-Malvaceae’ and to recognise them at the subfamily level instead (Bayer & Kubitzki, Genera and Families of Vascular Plants 5 (2001)). This seems the less desirable solution since it treats Malvaceae as a dustbin family and creates greater taxonomic instability at the family level than the solution above. Each species in this account has been assessed for its conservation status by Martin Cheek using the criteria of IUCN (2001). IUCN Red List Categories: Version 3.1. IUCN Species Survival Commission, IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK. Both authors thank Quentin Luke for painstakingly checking the manuscript while in proof, and providing many new records that extended the previously known altitudinal and geographical ranges of the taxa. These additions were based on his own prolific collections and those at the East African herbarium at Nairobi.
![[family STERCULIACEAE]](/fsi/img/misc/plants/static_thumbs/flora_tropEA_icon96.jpg)