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(Last Modified On 5/14/2013)
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(Last Modified On 5/14/2013)
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Family
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AVICENNIACEAE
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Contributor
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HAROLD N. MOLDENKE
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Description
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Shrubs or trees of maritime regions, mostly inhabiting saline or brackish coastal mangrove lagoons, with pencil-like pneumatophores; branches, branchlets, and twigs commonly terete, prominently nodose, and articulate. Leaves decussate- opposite, thick-textured, persistent, petiolate, exstipulate, the blades entire. In- florescences axillary or terminal, determinate and centrifugal (cymose), spicate or subcapitate, the axillary inflorescences mostly paired. Flowers sessile, perfect, hypogynous, small; calyx of 5 nearly separate sepals, the sepals ovate and plainly imbricate, unchanged in fruit, subtended by a pseudo-involucre composed of a scale-like bractlet and 2 alternate scale-like prophylla slightly shorter than the calyx and imbricate with each other and with the sepals; corolla regular, cam- panulate-rotate, 4-parted, the petals connate basally; stamens 4, inserted in the throat of the corolla-tube, equal or subdidynamous; gynoecium 2-carpellate, syncarpous, the ovary compound, but with a free central often more or less 4- winged placenta, the ovules 4, pendant, orthotropous, hanging from the tip of the central columella. Fruit a compressed oblique capsule, with a juicy and somewhat fleshy usually tomentellous exocarp, dehiscent by 2 valves, by abortion regularly only 1-seeded; seeds without a testa, the embryo viviparous, the radicle pubescent, the cotyledons 2, folded lengthwise.
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Habit
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Shrubs or trees
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Distribution
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Comprises only a single genus, Avicennia, with 16 known living species and varieties of the tropics and subtropics of both the Old and New Worlds; one of the chief constituents of almost all coastal mangrove lagoons.
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