木橘属 mu ju shu

Authors: Prof. Dianxiang Zhang & Thomas G. Hartley

Trees, deciduous, with straight axillary spines. Leaves alternate, odd-pinnately (1 or)3(or 5)-foliolate. Inflorescences terminal and axillary, loosely fasciculate or racemose and few flowered or flowers solitary. Flowers bisexual, fragrant. Calyx cup-shaped, 4- or 5-lobed. Petals 4 or 5, imbricate in bud. Stamens 30-50 or more; filaments short, subulate, distinct or irregularly coherent at base; anthers linear-lanceolate. Disk columnar or bell-shaped. Gynoecium 8-20-loculed, syncarpous; ovules many per locule, in 2 rows; style short and thick; stigma capitate, cylindric, or bluntly conic, longitudinally grooved. Fruit a berry, globose to ellipsoid to pyriform; exocarp thin, parenchymatous; mesocarp woody; endocarp fleshy, soft and pulpy, becoming hard and reddish orange when dry, composed largely of elongate sessile pulp vesicles which are lacking within seed locules. Seeds depressed ovoid, woolly when ripe, embedded in a clear glutinous substance that becomes hard when dry; seed coat fleshy; endosperm lacking; embryo solitary, straight; cotyledons ovate, plano-convex; hypocotyl partly included between cotyledons.

One species: native to India, cultivated in China.

Lower Taxon

• Aegle marmelos (Linnaeus) Corrêa