THE SOAPBERRY FAMILY 



SAPINDACEiE R. Brown 



APINDACEi^ consist of about 120 genera, comprising some 1000 

 species of trees, shrubs or vines, a few of them herbaceous. They 

 are of wide distribution, but especially numerous in the tropical regions 

 of the Old World. They are of no great economic value, except that 

 the saponin, which many of them contain, principally in their bark, renders them 

 of value as a vegetable soap, and to some extent in medicine. 



The Sapindacece have mostly alternate, compound leaves, generally pinnate 

 and without stipules. The flowers are in racemose panicles or con'mbs, regular 

 or shghtly irregular, dioecious, polygamous, polygamo-dicecious or rarely perfect. 

 The calyx is cleft into 4 or 5 imbricated sepals; the corolla consists of 3 to 5 petals, 

 or sometimes wanting; disk fleshy, entire or lobed; stamens 5 to 10, sometimes fewer 

 or more, usually inserted on the disk, their filaments distinct or sometimes united 

 at the base; ovary 2- to 4-lobed or entire, 3-celled or 2- to 4-celled, the styles partly 

 united; stigma capitate or lobed, the ovules i or several in each cell. The fruit is 

 various, being leathery or membranous, capsular or berry-like; seeds i or more in 

 each cavity, bony, leathery or crustaceous, with thin fleshy endosperm or none. 



In addition to the trees there are several genera of climbers in our area, the 

 best known being the herbaceous Balloon vines, Cardiospenmim, of which 3 species 

 occur in the United States. Our arborescent genera are : 



Fruit berry-like, sessile; flowers regular. 

 Ovules solitary in each cavity of the ovary. 

 Ovules 2 in each cavity. 



Ovary 2-celled; leaflets 2, 4, or 6. 

 Ovary 3-celled; leaflets 3. 

 Fruit a leathery capsule, stalked. 

 Flowers regular; ovules i in each cavity. 

 Flowers irregular;, ovules 2 in each cavity. 



1. Sapindt(S. 



2. Exothea. 



3. Hypelale. 



4. Cupania. 



5. Ungnadia. 



I. THE SOAPBERRIES 



GENUS SAPINDUS [TOURNEFORT] LINN^US 



HE name Sapindus is from the Latin Sapo indicus, Indian soap, in 

 allusion to the saponifying properties of the berries, the pulp of which 

 makes a lather when rubbed up in water. About 10 species are known,- 

 distributed in tropical and warm-temperate regions of America and 

 Asia; Sapindus Saponaria Linnaeus is the type of the genus. 



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