十齿花属 shi chi hua shu

Shrubs or trees, with bisexual flowers, semievergreen. Leaf blade margin sharply serrulate. Inflorescences abbreviated cymes in a pedunculate umbel; bracts at apex of peduncle, forming an involucre, caducous. Flowers yellowish green, 2-4 mm in diam., mainly 5-7-merous, pedicellate. Stamens 5-7, attached outside disk margin, opposite sepals. Disk flat cup-shaped, fleshy, with 5-7 yellow lobes opposite petals. Ovary connected with disk at base, 3-loculed basally but incompletely loculed apically; ovules 2 per locule, all but 1 aborting before maturity, placentation axile at top of a free basal placentation; funicle and placenta developing into a seed stipe when mature. Fruit a drupaceous capsule, ellipsoid-ovoid, puberulent, 1-seeded, perianth persistent, style persistent and developing into a beak. Seeds with rough stipe at base; aril absent.

One species: S and SW China, N Myanmar.

Lower Taxon

• Dipentodon sinicus Dunn