All books
Entries
Pick a letter, or find an entry by name.
Aroideae
3-632.14.00English: True arums; Cuckoo pints; Lords-and-ladies.
Clades: Araceae; Alismatales; Liliidae; Lilianae; Angiospermae; Plants.
Members: 70 genera; 2,000 species.
Members: arum, Amorphophallus (Corpse flower), Philodendron, Dieffenbachia (Dumb cane), Pistia (Water lettuce).
Regions: global; tropical bias; South America and Africa; Europe, North America, Northeast Asia.
Habitats: incredibly diverse; tropical rainforests, wet, swampy lowlands, humid jungle floors; vertical tree trunks as climbers; temperate members typically inhabit damp, deciduous woodlands and ditch banks.
Content: high abundance of needle-sharp calcium oxalate raphides paired with proteolytic enzymes (like sap toxins that cause immediate severe swelling).BotanyType: highly diverse; mostly terrestrial perennial herbs, massive geophytes, climbing hemiepipytes, or rare free-floating aquatics (Pistia).
Root: Fleshy adventitious roots emerging from underground structures or aerial anchoring roots on climbing species.
Stems: highly variable; modified into huge subterranean corms/tubers, thick creeping rhizomes, or succulent elongating vines.
Leaves: broadly alternate and highly varied; from basic sagitate/cordate shapes to deeply compound, pedate, or palmate formations; typically have well-developed petioles and reticulate (net-like) or parallel-pinnate venation.
Flowers: drastically reduced; strictly unisexual, monoecious; arranged in distinct, highly organized zones along a fleshy spadix; female flowers occupy the lowest zone, male flowers sit above them, and they are often separated or topped by sterile appendages or hair-like structures; the spike is enveloped by a prominent, sometimes highly colorful or foul-smelling spathe.
Reproduction: exclusively sexual via highly specialized, deceptive pollination strategies (often using carrion-mimicking foul odors, heat generation, or temporary insect-trapping chambers within the spathe base); asexually reproduces via tuber fragmentation, offsets, or stolons.
Fruit: berries; vibrant, usually red or orange; fleshy; in dense spikes.
Clades: Araceae; Alismatales; Liliidae; Lilianae; Angiospermae; Plants.
Members: 70 genera; 2,000 species.
Members: arum, Amorphophallus (Corpse flower), Philodendron, Dieffenbachia (Dumb cane), Pistia (Water lettuce).
Regions: global; tropical bias; South America and Africa; Europe, North America, Northeast Asia.
Habitats: incredibly diverse; tropical rainforests, wet, swampy lowlands, humid jungle floors; vertical tree trunks as climbers; temperate members typically inhabit damp, deciduous woodlands and ditch banks.
Content: high abundance of needle-sharp calcium oxalate raphides paired with proteolytic enzymes (like sap toxins that cause immediate severe swelling).BotanyType: highly diverse; mostly terrestrial perennial herbs, massive geophytes, climbing hemiepipytes, or rare free-floating aquatics (Pistia).
Root: Fleshy adventitious roots emerging from underground structures or aerial anchoring roots on climbing species.
Stems: highly variable; modified into huge subterranean corms/tubers, thick creeping rhizomes, or succulent elongating vines.
Leaves: broadly alternate and highly varied; from basic sagitate/cordate shapes to deeply compound, pedate, or palmate formations; typically have well-developed petioles and reticulate (net-like) or parallel-pinnate venation.
Flowers: drastically reduced; strictly unisexual, monoecious; arranged in distinct, highly organized zones along a fleshy spadix; female flowers occupy the lowest zone, male flowers sit above them, and they are often separated or topped by sterile appendages or hair-like structures; the spike is enveloped by a prominent, sometimes highly colorful or foul-smelling spathe.
Reproduction: exclusively sexual via highly specialized, deceptive pollination strategies (often using carrion-mimicking foul odors, heat generation, or temporary insect-trapping chambers within the spathe base); asexually reproduces via tuber fragmentation, offsets, or stolons.
Fruit: berries; vibrant, usually red or orange; fleshy; in dense spikes.