English: Screwpine family; Screw family.
Genera: Freycinetia, Martellidendron, Pandanus, Sararanga.
German: Schraubenbaumgewächse.
Clades:
Pandanales; Angiosperms,
Monocots,
Region: Old World tropics and subtropics, West Africa,
Madagascar, South and Southeast Asia, Northern Australia, Pacific
Habitat: coastal sand dunes, mangrove edges, littoral forests, tropical rainforest understories, swamp forests, riverbanks.
Content: volatile aromatic piperidine alkaloids,pandamarilactones, 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (giving pandan flavor); essential oils, polyphenols, lignans, steroids; calcium oxalate crystals.
Use: culinary, flavoring wraps; fiber for weaving mats, baskets, sails; food fruits, seeds; coastal erosion control. traditional medicine.
BotanyType: trees, palm-like shrubs; dioecious; evergreen woody lianas, or root-climbing epiphytes.
Root: prominent thick stilt roots; emerging low on the trunk; support weak stems in soft soils; aerial climbing roots in vine-like genera.
Stem: ringed; woody or fibrous; marked by leaf scars; sparingly or fork-branched, dichotomous; lacking secondary growth.
Leaves: long; narrow; strap-like; sheath-based; parallel veins; sharp, spiny margins and midribs, tightly clustered in corkscrew-like spirals at branch tips.
Inflorescence: strongly dimorphic terminal spandices; surrounded by showy, leaf-like bracts, yellow, white, or red; male inflorescences are large, branched, highly fragrant catkin-like spikes; female inflorescences are dense, head-like clusters.
Flowers: unisexual; highly reduced, lacking a true perianth; male flowers with many stamens; female flowers of single or fused carpels with sessile stigmas.
Pollination: by wind, animals, insects, bats, tree-dwelling rodents.
Fruit: composite syncarp; woody or fleshy; pineapple-like; tightly packed, angular multiple drupes or berries that turn orange, red, or yellow when ripe.
Seed: small; hard; encased in fibrous or stony endocarps; with oily endosperm
Dispersion: by sea; by fruit bats, birds, crabs.
TaxonomyPandanaceae is the main family in
Pandanales.
They are often trees. They are placed in
Subphase 4.