| # The Families of Angiosperms |

L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz

### Himantandraceae Diels

Habit and leaf form. Trees (with peltate-scaly indumentum); bearing essential oils; leptocaul. Mesophytic. Leaves alternate; spiral; petiolate; non-sheathing; gland-dotted; aromatic; simple. Lamina entire; pinnately veined; cross-venulate. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins entire. Leaf development not ‘graminaceous’.

Leaf anatomy. The leaf lamina dorsiventral. Stomata mainly confined to one surface (characteristically clustered around the peltate scales on the underside). Hairs present. Complex hairs present (dense, on the under-surface); peltate (fimbriate). The mesophyll with spherical etherial oil cells.

Axial (stem, wood) anatomy. Young stems with solid internodes. Pith with diaphragms to without diaphragms (with groups of stone cells tending to form transverse diaphragms); heterogeneous. Cork cambium present; initially superficial. Nodes tri-lacunar, or bilacunar (? - but with three traces, according to Lammers et al. 1986). Primary vascular tissues comprising a ring of bundles (at first), or in a cylinder, without separate bundles (subsequently); collateral. Internal phloem absent. Cortical bundles absent. Medullary bundles absent. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring. Primary medullary rays mostly only one cel wide.

The wood diffuse porous. The vessels medium; solitary, radially paired, in radial multiples, and clustered. The vessel end-walls simple, or scalariform and simple. The vessels with spiral thickening (indistinctly so), or without spiral thickening. The axial xylem with fibre tracheids; without septate fibres. The fibres without spiral thickening. The parenchyma apotracheal (continuous-banded). The secondary phloem stratified into hard (fibrous) and soft (parenchymatous) zones. ‘Included’ phloem absent. The wood not storied.

Reproductive type, pollination. Unisexual flowers absent. Plants hermaphrodite. Pollination entomophilous.

Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers solitary (or paired, on axillary short-shoots). Bracts calyptrate, or not calyptrate. Flowers large; calyptrate (calyptra representing either bracts or an outer perianth whorl); regular; partially acyclic. The perianth acyclic, the androecium acyclic, and the gynoecium acyclic. Free hypanthium absent. Hypogynous disk absent.

Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla; 9–11. Calyx 4, or 6; 1 whorled; gamosepalous; calyptrate (i.e the inner whorl of the bracts/perianth conundrum also calyptrate). Corolla 7–9 (merging acropetally into the androecium); polypetalous; imbricate; regular; white, or red. Petals narrow.

Androecium 25–40. Androecial members maturing centripetally; free of the perianth; free of one another; spiralled. Androecium including staminodes. Staminodes 8–10; internal to the fertile stamens; non-petaloid (subulate). Stamens about 15–35; laminar to petaloid. Anthers adnate; non-versatile; dehiscing by longitudinal valves; extrorse (the thecae abaxial). Pollen shed as single grains. Pollen grains aperturate; 1 aperturate; sulcate.

Gynoecium (6–)7–10(–28) carpelled; apocarpous; eu-apocarpous to semicarpous (at first free, but soon concrescent); superior. Carpel apically stigmatic; 1(–2) ovuled. Placentation apical, or marginal. Ovules non-arillate; anatropous.

Fruit fleshy; if the original carpels seen as individual fruits, an aggregate. The fruiting carpels coalescing into a secondary syncarp (i.e. the carpels of the one gynoecium fusing to form a fleshy, gall-like syncarp). Seeds endospermic. Endosperm not ruminate; oily.

Seedling. Germination phanerocotylar.

Physiology, phytochemistry. Alkaloids present (4 species). Iridoids not detected. Sieve-tube plastids S-type.

Geography, cytology. Tropical. Eastern Malaysia and Northern Australia. 2n = 24.

Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Crassinucelli. Dahlgren’s Superorder Magnoliiflorae; Magnoliales. Cronquist’s Subclass Magnoliidae; Magnoliales. APG III core angiosperms; Superorder Magnolianae. APG IV Order Magnoliales.

Species 2. Genera 1; only genus, Galbulimima.

Illustrations. • Galbulimima belgraveana, as G. baccata: Hook. Ic. Pl. 31 (1915). • Himantandra belgraveana (= Galbulimima), Hutchinson).

We advise against extracting comparative information from the descriptions. This is much more easily achieved using the DELTA data files or the interactive key, which allows access to the character list, illustrations, full and partial descriptions, diagnostic descriptions, differences and similarities between taxa, lists of taxa exhibiting or lacking specified attributes, distributions of character states within any set of taxa, geographical distribution, genera included in each family, and classifications (Dahlgren; Dahlgren, Clifford, and Yeo; Cronquist; APG). See also Guidelines for using data taken from Web publications.

Cite this publication as: ‘Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. 1992 onwards. The families of flowering plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. Version: 8th June 2026. delta-intkey.com’.

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