| # The Families of Angiosperms |

L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz

### Boerlagellaceae H.J. Lam

~ Sapotaceae (unconvincingly).

Habit and leaf form. Trees; non-laticiferous, without coloured juice. Leaves large; alternate; simple. Lamina entire; ovate. Leaves exstipulate. Lamina margins entire.

Reproductive type, pollination. Unisexual flowers present, or absent (?). Plants hermaphrodite, or monoecious, or dioecious, or polygamomonoecious (?).

Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in racemes. The ultimate inflorescence units racemose. Inflorescences axillary. Flowers one to two bracteolate.

Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla, or sepaline (?). Calyx 5; 1 whorled; polysepalous; much imbricate. Corolla unknown.

Gynoecium 5 carpelled. The pistil 5 celled. Gynoecium syncarpous; synovarious, or synstylovarious, or eu-syncarpous; superior. Ovary 5 locular. Ovules (or at least, the seeds) non-arillate.

Fruit fleshy; dehiscent, or indehiscent (?); a capsule (tardily dehiscent), or a berry (?); 1(–10) seeded (?). Seeds non-endospermic; large. Embryo well differentiated. Cotyledons 2 (fleshy, contorted).

Geography, cytology. Paleotropical. Tropical. Western Malaysia. Malay Archipelago.

Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae (two poorly known genera, whose affinities are uncertain); Crassinucelli, or Tenuinucelli (?). Dahlgren’s Superorder Primuliflorae; Ebenales. Cronquist’s Subclass Dilleniidae; Ebenales. APG III core angiosperms; core eudicot; Superorder Asteranae. APG IV Order Ericales (as a synonym of Sapotaceae?).

Species 1 (Boerlagella spectabilis). Genera 1; only genus, Boerlagella.

General remarks. Inseparable in terms of this description from Rosaceae and Simaroubaceae. Gunn et al. (1992) refered this family tentatively to Sapotaceae, from which it seems to differ in the racemose inflorescence and (?)lack of latex.

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’.

Contents