Araliaceae—I

Trees, shrubs, lianas, woody epiphytes or (extra-Mai.) more rarely herbs. Branches usually stout with leaves clustered at their ends; armed or unarmed; glabrous or with a tomentum of stellate or simple hairs; buds either covered by the stipular sheaths of leaves or by cataphylls. Leaves spiral or rarely opposite or in whorls; petiole usually clasping the stem; stipules either distinct or united into a ligule or absent (in Osmoxylon the petiole bears ± elaborate crests around its base); lamina digitately compound or pinnate, sometimes to the second or third degree, or simple, when either entire or pinnately or palmately lobed, margin entire or dentate. Inflorescence terminal or more rarely lateral; either simple or compound racemes or spikes, or more commonly of umbels or capitula, either solitary or arranged in compound umbels or panicles; bracts usually small and caducous; pedicel either articulated with the flower or continuous with it. Flowers hermaphrodite or heterosexual, sometimes dioecious; actinomorphic. Calyx lobes small, or reduced to a rim, or rarely absent. Petals 3 to numerous, often 5, sometimes fused into a calyptra, or forming a tube with spreading lobes (Osmoxylon), valvate or imbricate in bud, usually with a broad base but rarely narrowed below. Stamens usually as many as the petals and alternating with them, or twice as many, or indefinite; filaments inserted at the edge of the disk; anthers dorsifixed, introrse, pollen sacs 4 or rarely 8. Ovary inferior, half inferior, or very rarely (extra-Mai.) superior, 1- to many-celled, the top of the ovary usually a fleshy disk; styles and stigmas as many as the cells, either connate or wholly or partially free. Ovules solitary, pendulous, anatropous, with the raphe ventral. Fruit baccate or drupaceous, exocarp usually fleshy, endocarp forming cartilaginous or membranaceous pyrenes around the seeds. Seeds one per pyrene, with a small embryo within smooth or ruminate endosperm. Distribution. About 50 genera with a roughly estimated 1150 species, ranging mainly in the warmer parts of both hemispheres (especially in montane zones), a small number in or extending to cool-temperate regions. With the exception of SE. Asia, the family and its centres of distribution are largely found within the land masses derived from ancient Gondwanaland. In Malesia 17 genera with a total (excluding Schefflera) of 117 species in 16 genera. (The largest genus, Schefflera, with an estimated 250 species for the region, is omitted from this account.)