e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1710239071724_4114363556806866" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - Hetero<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1710239071725_49329198991161216" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>pyxis
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Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Heteropyxidaceae - Heteropyxis Harv.

Description:

  • Small trees or shrubs, aromatic, deciduous to semideciduous
  • Leaves alternate, simple, entire, petiolate; stipules rudimentary
  • Inflorescence a many-flowered, terminal panicle
  • Flowers usually unisexual by abortion, regular, small, perigynous with the hypanthium cyathiform; creamy yellow, scented, nectariferous
  • Calyx with (4)5 imbricate, persistent sepals
  • Corolla with (4)5 free, imbricate petals, arising on inner rim of hypanthium and alternating with calyx lobes, conspicuously gland-dotted, fugacious
  • Disc well developed and lining lower part of hypanthium, orange-brown
  • Stamens (4)5-8(-19), free, exserted, outer ones opposite petals; anthers 2-locular
  • Female flowers with (4)5-8(-10) staminodes
  • Ovary superior, globose, 2(3)-locular; ovules numerous on an axile placenta; style short, inserted in a depression of the ovary apex, persistent; stigma capitate
  • Fruit a small, loculicidal, 2(3)-valved capsule, partly included in persistent calyx, globose
  • Seeds numerous, minute, crescent-shaped and variously compressed, slightly winged, brownish

Nomenclature:

  • Heteropyxis Harv.
    • Harvey 2: 18, t. 128 (1863) name conserved, not of Griffith
    • Phillips: 492 (1951)
    • Stern & Brizicky: 111 (1958)
    • Fernandes: 207 (1971)
    • Fernandes: 212 (1978)
    • Tobe & Raven: 197 (1987)
    • Dahlgren & Van Wyk: 35 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Southern Africa: Species 3, Northern Province, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal

References:

  • DAHLGREN, R. & VAN WYK, A.E. 1988. Structures and relationships of families endemic to or centered in southern Africa. Monographs in Systematic Botany from the Missouri Botanical Garden 25
  • FERNANDES, A. 1971. Contribution à la connaissance du genre Heteropyxis Harv. Mitteilungen der Botanischen Staatssammlung München 10
  • FERNANDES, A. 1978. Heteropyxidaceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
  • HARVEY, W.H. 1863. Thesaurus capensis 2. Hodges, Smith & Co., Dublin
  • PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa No. 25
  • STERN, W.L. & BRIZICKY, G.K. 1958. The comparative anatomy and taxonomy of Heteropyxis. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 85
  • TOBE, H. & RAVEN, P.H. 1987. Embryology and systematic position of Heteropyxis (MYRTALES). American Journal of Botany 74

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