6. Artocarpus J.R. Forster & G. Forster, Char. Gen. Pl. 51. 1775.
[nom. cons.]
波罗蜜属 bo luo mi shu
Radermachia Thunberg; Sitodium Parkinson, nom. rej.
Trees, evergreen or deciduous, with latex; monoecious. Stipules free, intrapetiolar or lateral, amplexicaul or not. Leaves spirally arranged or distichous; leaf blade simple to pinnatifid, rarely pinnate, leathery, margin entire. Inflorescences sometimes borne on main branches or trunk, unisexual, capitate, many-flowered. Male flowers: free, surrounded by peltate to clavate interfloral bracts; calyx tubular, slightly 2-lobed or 2-4-lobed; lobes imbricate or valvate; stamen 1, straight in bud, slightly to conspicuously exserted from calyx; anthers globose to oblong, 2-loculed; pistillode absent. Female flowers: at least partially adnate to each other and/or to interfloral bracts; calyx tubular, basally thin walled, apically thick walled and either completely fused or not; ovary free; style central or ± lateral; stigmas 1 or 2, equal or unequal. Flowers and bracts fused laterally to form a syncarp. Syncarp fleshy throughout or at least at basal portions of calyx, sometimes very large, flowers and bracts fused at their tips to form an areolate surface or free and forming variously shaped processes on surface. Seed without endosperm; cotyledons fleshy, equal or unequal.
About 50 species: tropical and subtropical Asia, Pacific Islands; 14 species (five endemic, two introduced) in China.
Some species are important for their edible fruit (most notably Artocarpus communis, “breadfruit”), and/or timber.
Records of Artocarpus gomezianus Wallich ex Trécul from Taiwan (FRPS 23(1): 51. 1998) have not been confirmed, and this species was excluded from Fl. Taiwan. There is also a specimen without flowers or fruit from W Yunnan that may be A. gomezianus, which species is recorded from N India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.
