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(Last Modified On 7/3/2013)
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(Last Modified On 7/3/2013)
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Family
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CARYOCARACEAE
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Contributor
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GHILLEAN T. PRANCE
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Description
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Trees, rarely shrubs or subshrubs. Stipules 2-4, usually soon caducous or want- ing. Leaves petiolate, trifoliolate, opposite or alternate, the margins of the leaf- lets usually serrate, dentate, crenate or rarely entire, often with stipels at the base of the leaflets. Inflorescences of terminal racemes. Flowers large, hermaphroditic, actinomorphic; sepals 5 ( -6), imbricate and large in Caryocar or small and reduced in Anthodiscus; petals 5(-6), imbricate, caducous, free or rarely slightly connate at the base or connate at the apex to form a calyptra in Anthodiscus; stamens very numerous, 55-750 the filaments frequently caducous as a unit together with the petals, usually basally united in a ring, long and slender, and usually with some much shorter interior ones which are often recurved, the apical portion densely tuberculate with minute glandlike tubercles, often with sterile filaments bearing spirally arranged tubercles for their entire length, or an adaxial basal row of sterile staminodes, the anthers basifixed or attached at the middle, bilocular; ovary superior, free, 4(-6)-celled in Caryocar and 8-20-celled in Anthodiscus, 1 ovule in each locule, the ovules basal, erect, anatropous or atropous; the styles 4 or 8-20, long and slender, apically stigmatic. Fruits drupes with the mesocarp indehiscent, usually fatty and fleshy, the endocarp hard and woody, muricate, tuberculate or spinulose on the outer surface, eventually splitting into 1-seeded pyrenes or mericarps; 1-4 seeds developing in Caryocar, 8-20 in Anthodiscus, often reniform, the endosperm thin or lacking, the embryo with a straight, ar- cuate or spirally twisted radicle, a fleshy hypocotyl, and 2 small cotyledons. Pollen of Caryocar subprolate or prolate spherical, tricolporate (very rarely dicolporate or tetracolporate), the exterior reticulate or ornate, 36-120 microns polar diam., 30-114 microns equatorial diam., with characteristic equatorial protusions and prominent apocolpi. The genus Caryocar is bat pollinated.
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Habit
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Trees, rarely shrubs or subshrubs.
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Distribution
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The family contains 2 genera: Caryocar with 15 species ranging from Costa Rica to southern Brazil and Paraguay, and Anthodiscus with 8 species in Co- lombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, and northern and western Amazonia.
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Note
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Only Caryocar is represented in Panama. Caryocar has several species with an edible fruit and also is important as a timber tree. The fruit of at least 3 species is used as a fish poison by Amazonian Indian tribes.
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Reference
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Barth, 0. M. 1966. Estudos morphol6gicas dos polens em Caryocaraceae. Rodriguesia 37: 351-428. Prance, G. T. 1972. Caryocaraceae. In B. Maguire. The Botany of the Guayana Highland IX. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 23: 127-131. Prance, G. T. & M. F. da Silva. 1973. Caryocaraceae. Flora Neotropica 12: 1-75. Vogel, S. 1968. Chiropterophilie in der neotropischen Flora. Flora, Abt. B, 157: 565-569.
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