Author:
Qjure
Book:
Qjurious
Type:
Info
Chapter:
3-622.43.00
Annonaceae
English: Soursop family.
Region: pantropical.
Habitat: rainforests.
Members: 112 genera; 2150 species.
Use: fruits, custard apple.
Botany
Trees, shrubs, or lianes, rarely rhizomatous shrublets; glabrous or with an indumentum of simple, stellate or lepidote hairs; aromatic.
Stem: bark usually smooth and entire, pale grey or buff to brown; branches often reddish to purple-black with lozenge-shaped striations, pubescent or tomentose, rarely glabrous, when young; pith septate, oil cells present.
Leaves: alternate, entire, exstipulate; alternate in two rows, entire, penninerved, membranous to coriaceous, exstipulate; distichous.
Flowers: terminal, supra-axillary, extra-axillary, leaf-opposed, axillary; solitary or paired to fasciculate or cymose; on the young or old wood; sessile or rarely pedicellate; actinomorphic; bisexual or more rarely unisexual; often fragrant; mostly trimerous.
Calyx: 3 sepals; usually valvate in bud, free or ± united.
Corolla: 6 petals, in two equal or ± unequal whorls; imbricate or valvate, rarely open in bud; free or ± united at the base; usually alternating with the sepals.
Androecium: stamens many; hypogynous; spiral, or 6 to 12 and whorled; sometimes staminodial; anthers linear to semi-orbicular, lateral or extrorse, rarely apical; connective usually prolonged beyond the thecae, with the apex truncate, oblique, capitate, convex, conical or acute; filaments usually very short or absent, free, rarely more elongate and united in a cone over the gynoecium (Xylopia)
Gynoecium: carpels ?–1; free or united at the base ( in Monodora completely united to form a 1-locular ovary); ovules ?–1; styles free or united, or absent.
Fruit: apocarpous; ripe carpels baccate, fleshy or lignified, or rarely dehiscent; stipitate or sessile, or syncarpous; with either aggregated 1-seeded carpels or 1-locular and many-seeded.
Seeds: vertical to horizontal, sometimes arillate, with abundant ruminate endosperm; embryo minute.