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(Last Modified On 1/11/2013)
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(Last Modified On 1/11/2013)
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Family
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ARALIACEAE
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Contributor
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LORIN I. NEVLING JR.
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Description
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In Panama, perennial herbs, shrubs or trees, sometimes scandent epiphytes when juvenile, rarely epiphytic at maturity. Leaves alternate, simple to pinnately or palmately compound or decompound; stipules adnate to the petiole, sometimes hardly distinct, sometimes connate and produced into a coriaceous ligulate sheath, sometimes absent. Flowers in umbels or heads, these disposed in solitary or compound inflorescences; pedicels continuous with or articulated with the calyx, sometimes swollen at the apex into minute cupules. Flowers epigynous, bisexual, polygamous or dioecious, actinomorphic, usually small; calyx tube obconic, cupuliform, or short-cylindric; petals 5-10, broadest at the base, deciduous at maturity, free or connate and calyptrate, valvate or narrowly imbricate; stamens usually as many as the petals and alternate with them (rarely more numerous), inserted on a disc within the calyx-limb, the filaments filiform or ligulate, the anthers oblong, ovate or subglobose, dorsally affixed, the locules 2, longitudinally dehiscent; disc epigynous, carnose and short-conic or annular; pistil 1, the ovary inferior, in our species 2- to 12-locular, the styles as many as the locules, sometimes distinct and at length recurved with the stigmas terminal or on the interior surfaces, sometimes completely connate into a carnose column, rarely suppressed with the stigmas sessile on the disc, the ovules solitary, pendulous from the apex of each locule, anatropous with a ventral raphe; fruit baccate or drupaceous, the exocarp usually carnose, the endocarp divided into distinct crustaceous, cartilaginous or mem- branous pyrenes, or hardly distinct from the exocarp; seeds solitary in pyrenes, laterally compressed, triquetrous in cross section, with copious endosperm and a small embryo near the hilum.
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Habit
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herb
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Note
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A family of about 65 genera with more than 800 species. This treatment is based on a study of the North American Araliaceae by Albert C. Smith whose very capable and helpful work was published in North American Flora 28B:3-41. 1944.
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Reference
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North American Flora 28B:3-41. 1944.
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Note
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The Araliaceae are represented in Panama by five indigenous genera and a single introduced ornamental species of a sixth. The introduction, Nothopanax guilyfolyei (Cogn. & Marche) Merr., is easily recognized by its once-pinnately compound leaves, the leaflets of which are conspicuously and coarsely serrate.
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Key
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a. Leaves 3- or 4-pinnate, the leaflet margins mucronate-serrulate ............... 1. SCIADODENDRON aa. Leaves simple or palmately compound. b. Flowers in umbels (in heads in Dendropanax sessiliflorus with bi- sexual flowers and some species of Schefflera with connate petals, compound leaves and conspicuously ligulate petiole), bisexual or polygamo-monoecious. c. Styles and locules 2, rarely 3; petioles dilated at the base into a coriaceous ligulate sheath ........................................... 2. DIDYMOPANAX cc. Styles and locules 5-9, usually 5. d. Leaves simple, the petiole without an obvious ligule; petals free. 3. DENDROPANAX dd. Leaves compound (simple only in S. epiphytica among our species), the petiole with a conspicuous coriaceous ligule; petals usually connate and calyptrate- ......................-................ 4. SCHEFFLERA bb. Flowers in heads, polygamo-dioecious (rarely polygamo-monoecious); petioles without an obvious ligule .--------------------... 5. OREOPANAX
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