Homalium
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Authority
Sleumer, Hermann O. 1980. Flacourtiaceae. Fl. Neotrop. Monogr. 22: 1-499. (Published by NYBG Press)
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Family
Salicaceae
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Scientific Name
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Type
Type species. H. racemosum Jacquin.
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Synonyms
Racoubea, Napimoga
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Description
Description - Shrubs or trees, rarely tall and with buttresses. Leaves (in American spp) alternate, penninerved, usually serrate-, sometimes repand-crenate, or subentire (the teeth glandular beneath), petiolate; stipules minute, caducous or rarely absent. Flowers [male and female], in axillary and/or (sub)terminal many-flowered racemes or panicles, solitary or fascicled along the rhachis, sessile or pedicellate, the articulate pedicel subtended by an unusually small, caducous or persistent bract. Calyx tube obconical or turbinate (maybe pediform at the base), connate with the inferior part of the ovary. Calyx lobes or sepals 5-8(-12), usually narrow, persistent, in American spp hardly accrescent. Petals inserted in the throat of the calyx, as many as and similar to though usually larger than the sepals and alternating with them. Stamens epipetalous, in the American spp in fascicles of (2-)3-7; filaments filiform; anthers small, extrorse, dorsifixed. Disk represented by a (mostly pubescent) gland opposite each sepal. Ovary free in its upper part, conical, apex extenuate to the styles (isomerous with the placentas), in all American spp forming a shorter or longer column, 1-locular, placentas 2-6(-8), each with one to few ovules; stigma simple or capitellate. Fruit capsular, half-inferior, rather coriaceous, indehiscent or 2-8-valved from the apex; seeds solitary or few, small, angular, often hairy; testa crustaceous; endosperm copious.
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Distribution
Pantropical, with ca 200 spp in several subgenera and sections; all neotropical spp belong to the subgenus Homalium, otherwise only found in Africa. The American spp accepted here are closely related to each other.