10. Cleomaceae
白花菜科 bai hua cai ke
Authors: Mingli Zhang & Gordon C. Tucker
Herbs [rarely shrubs], sometimes woody at base, producing mustard oils. Stems erect, sparsely or profusely branched, glabrous or glandular pubescent. Stipules scalelike or absent, caducous (petiolar spines sometimes present). Leaves alternate, spirally arranged, palmately compound; petiole often pulvinate; leaflets [1 or]3-7[-11]; leaflet blades with pinnate venation. Inflorescences racemes or corymbs or flowers solitary and axillary; peduncle present; bract present [or absent] at base of pedicels. Pedicel present; bracteoles absent. Flowers bisexual but sometimes appearing unisexual due to incomplete development, actinomorphic or slightly zygomorphic, rotate, crateriform, campanulate, or urceolate, hypogynous. Sepals 4, distinct or basally connate, persistent. Petals 4, distinct, imbricate, attached directly to receptacle; intrastaminal nectary-disk or glands present or sometimes absent. Stamens 6(-32); filaments free or basally adnate to gynophore (or along basal 1/3-1/2 in Gynandropsis); anthers dehiscing by longitudinal slits; pollen shed in single grains, 2-nucleate, commonly 3-colporate. Pistil 1, 2-carpellate; ovary superior; ovules 1 to many per locule, 2-tegmic, anatropous, placentation parietal; style 1, straight, short, thick; stigma 1, capitate, unlobed. Fruit an elongate capsule, ± dehiscent by lateral valves along their entire length [indehiscent or dehiscent schizocarp], usually stipitate from elongation of gynophore (lacking in Arivela). Seeds 1-10(-40) per capsule, tan, yellowish brown, or brown, cochleate-reniform, papillose or tuberculate, arillate or not; endosperm scanty or none but a persistent perisperm sometimes present.
Seventeen genera and ca. 150 species: worldwide in tropical and temperate regions; five genera and five species (three introduced) in China.
The generic reclassification of Cleomaceae followed here is based on studies of New World taxa by Iltis and Cochrane (Novon 17: 447-451. 2007). They recognized a number of smaller, more clearly delimited genera, based on seed anatomy and morphology, chromosome numbers, biogeographic analyses, and published molecular data. The resultant dismantling of the paraphyletic genus Cleome as it occurs in the New World is applicable in other regions, including Asia, because of the worldwide distribution of all the genera of the Cleomaceae.
Sun Bishin. 1999. Cleome. In: Wu Chengyi, ed., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 32: 531-540.
