Triumfetta

  • Authority

    Acevedo-Rodríguez, Pedro & collaborators. 1996. Flora of St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands. Mem. New York Bot. Gard. 78: 1-581.

  • Family

    Malvaceae

  • Scientific Name

    Triumfetta

  • Description

    Genus Description - Shrubs, subshrubs, or small trees, typically stellate-pubescent throughout, but also occasionally with simple hairs or peltate scales. Leaves alternate, simple or palmately 3(-5)-lobed, irregularly toothed; stipules linear-lanceolate, subpersistent. Inflorescences solitary or fascicled, few-flowered umbel-like cymes, lateral to and/or opposite the leaves or leafy bracts, sometimes terminal. Flowers bisexual (sometimes pistillate, and then the plants polygamodioecious); sepals 5, valvate, free, each with a subapical appendage; petals 5 (or absent), imbricate, free, shorter than or barely equal to the sepals in length, usually ciliate above a short claw at the base; androgynophore short (or absent), bearing 5 glands opposite the petals, usually crowned with a ciliate extrastaminal disk; stamens (5-) 10 to numerous in bisexual flowers (staminodial or absent in pistillate flowers), the filaments free; ovary 2- or 3(-5)-locular, with 2 pendulous ovules per locule, the style filiform, the stigma entire or briefly 2- or 5-parted. Fruit indehiscent, nutlike (or dehiscent and capsular or schizocarpic), and (l-)2-seeded, covered by numerous rigid, glabrous to retrorsely hispidulous or featherlike-pubescent spines, each terminated by a straight or hooked hyaline hair; seeds ovoid to pyriform.

    Distribution and Ecology - A pantropical genus of about 100 species, with centers of diversity in the Americas and Africa.