| # The Families of Angiosperms |

L. Watson and M.J. Dallwitz

### Siparunaceae (A. DC.) Schodde

~ Monimiaceae.

Habit and leaf form. Small trees, or shrubs, or lianas; bearing essential oils. Conspicuously heterophyllous (in Glossocalyx, where one of each pair is reduced to its midrib), or not conspicuously heterophyllous. Leaves persistent; opposite (decussate); gland-dotted, or not gland-dotted (?); aromatic, or without marked odour; simple. Lamina entire; pinnately veined. Leaves exstipulate.

Leaf anatomy. The leaf lamina dorsiventral. Stomata present; paracytic. Hairs present. Complex hairs present, or absent; when present, stellate (or scalelike). Adaxial hypodermis present, or absent. The mesophyll with spherical etherial oil cells; not containing mucilage cells.

Axial (stem, wood) anatomy. Cork cambium present; initially superficial. Nodes unilacunar (with several traces). Primary vascular tissues in a cylinder, without separate bundles; collateral. Internal phloem absent. Cortical bundles absent. Medullary bundles absent. Secondary thickening developing from a conventional cambial ring. Primary medullary rays mixed wide and narrow.

The wood diffuse porous. The vessels small; often in radial multiples. The vessel end-walls scalariform and simple. The vessels without vestured pits. The axial xylem without fibre tracheids; with libriform fibres; without septate fibres. The fibres without spiral thickening. The parenchyma apotracheal to paratracheal. The secondary phloem not stratified. ‘Included’ phloem absent. The wood not storied.

Reproductive type, pollination. Unisexual flowers present. Plants monoecious, or dioecious. Female flowers without staminodes. Gynoecium of male flowers absent. Pollination entomophilous (by gall insects).

Inflorescence, floral, fruit and seed morphology. Flowers aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in cymes, or in spikes, or in panicles. The ultimate inflorescence units cymose, or racemose. Inflorescences axillary (usually), or terminal (rarely); ‘cymose, clustered or spikelike’ (Schodde 1970). Flowers regular to very irregular. Free hypanthium present.

Perianth with distinct calyx and corolla, or sepaline, or of ‘tepals’ (depending on iterpretation); 4–8; joined (‘sometimes almost entirely connate into a calyptra or a flat, oblique, lanceolate tongue, usually united and intruded below into an interior annular disk (velum) around the androecium or gynoecium’); 1–2 whorled (valvate within the series); isomerous, or anisomerous; sepaloid.

Androecium in male flowers, 2–100 (to ‘many’). Androecial members free of the perianth; free of one another. Androecium exclusively of fertile stamens. Stamens 2–100 (to ‘many’). Filaments not appendiculate (without nectariferous appendages). Anthers dehiscing by longitudinal valves; introrse; bisporangiate (?). Pollen shed as single grains. Pollen grains nonaperturate.

Gynoecium 4–100 carpelled (to ‘many’); apocarpous, or syncarpous; eu-apocarpous; partly inferior (the carpels embedded in the hypanthium wall and disk). Carpel stylate (the style elongate); 1 ovuled. Placentation basal. Ovules ascending; arillate; anatropous; unitegmic; crassinucellate.

Fruit fleshy; an aggregate. The fruiting carpel indehiscent; drupaceous. Fruit enclosed in the fleshy hypanthium (i.e the drupaceous carpels usually permanently enclosed by or embedded in the walls of the enlarged, baccate hypanthium). Seeds endospermic. Endosperm not oily. Cotyledons 2.

Geography, cytology. Paleotropical and Neotropical. Tropical. Tropical America, West Indies, West Africa, Asia. X = 22.

Taxonomy. Subclass Dicotyledonae; Crassinucelli. Dahlgren’s Superorder Magnoliiflorae; Laurales. Cronquist’s Subclass Magnoliidae; Laurales. APG III core angiosperms; Superorder Magnolianae. APG IV Order Laurales (assumed by L.W.).

Species 160. Genera 3; Siparuna, Bracteanthus, Glossocalyx.

General remarks. See Schodde (1970). Taxon 19, 325.

Illustrations. • Siparuna mollis, S. guyanense (as Conuleum), S. reginae, Glossocalyx brevipes and G. longicuspis: Nat. Pflanzenfam. III (1891). • Glossocalyx longicuspis: Hook. Ic. Pl. 14 (1880).

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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