Inflorescence a terminal raceme with male flowers in apical clusters and female flowers pedicelled, basal
Petals 0
Male flowers: calyx splitting into 3-5 valvate lobes; disc absent; stamens 5-8; filaments free; anther thecae separate in upper half; pistil rudimentary, columnar, entire or 2- or 3-lobed
Female flowers: sepals 4-6, unequal, shortly pinnatifid, accrescent in fruit, glandular and stellately hairy; disc small, annular; ovary 3(4)-locular, with a single ovule in each locule, glandular and stellately hairy; styles connate at base, lobed or multifid at apex
Fruit a woody capsule of 3(4) bivalved cocci
Seeds ovoid-subglobose, smooth, evenly greyish or marbled, ecarunculate; testa crustaceous and albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat
Nomenclature:
Cephalocroton Hochst.
Hochstetter: 370 (1841)
Prain: 458 (1920)
Radcliffe-Smith: 282 (1987)
Webster: 79 (1994)
Radcliffe-Smith: 149 (1996)
Distribution & Notes:
Global: Species 5, Africa; Socotra, Madagascar and Comoro Islands and Sri Lanka
Southern Africa: Species 1: Cephalocroton mollis Klotzsch in Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province and KwaZulu-Natal
References:
HOCHSTETTER, C.H.F. 1841. Cephalocroton. Flora 24
PRAIN, D. 1920. Euphorbiaceae [in part]. Flora capensis 5, 2
RADCLIFFE-SMITH, A. 1987. Euphorbiaceae. Flora of tropical East Africa. Euphorbiaceae Part 1
RADCLIFFE-SMITH, A. 1996. Euphorbiaceae. Flora zambesiaca 9, 4
WEBSTER, G.L. 1994. Synopsis of the genera and suprageneric taxa of Euphorbiaceae. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 81
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Welcome to Biodiversity Advisor 2.0!
Biodiversity Advisor, developed by the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and its Data Partners, is a system that will provide integrated biodiversity information to a wide range of users who will have access to geospatial data, plant and animal species distribution data, ecosystem-level data, literature, images and metadata.
The integrated information comes from our much-loved Botanical Database of Southern Africa (BODATSA) also known as Plants of Southern Africa (POSA), Zoological Database of Southern Africa (ZODATSA), Biodiversity Geographic Information System (BGIS), SANBI's institutional repository (Opus) and others.
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