STERCULIACE^E 263 



STERCULIACE.E. 



Benth. et Hook. Gen. PL i. 214. 



Fruit and Seed. The ovary is free and syncarpous, but 

 the carpels are frequently only partly united at the base, or so 

 united as to form a two- to five- rarely ten- to twelve-celled 

 ovary. The ovary is however reduced to a single carpel in Wal- 

 theria. The ovules vary in number from two to many, rarely 

 solitary, and are (Heritiera) fixed to the inner angles of the 

 loculi, ascending or horizontal, anatropous or amphitropous, 

 with the raphe ventral or lateral, and the micropyle inferior. 

 Exceptions occur in Sterculia fcetida, S. Balanghas, and a few 

 other species, where the ovules are orthotropous with the micro- 

 pyle superior. The ovule of Heritiera macrophylla is amphitro- 

 pous, and the radicle superior. The fruit is dry, dehiscing 

 loculicidally, rarely baccate, or woody and indehiscent, or when 

 mature it often breaks up into cocci, indehiscent or with valvular 

 or follicular dehiscence. In Helicteres the carpels are curiously 

 twisted. The seeds are naked or woolly, or embedded in pulp 

 in the baccate fruits ; they are often furnished with an aril- 

 loid, and sometimes laterally compressed and drawn out into a 

 membranous wing. The testa is coriaceous, crustaceous, or has 

 a fleshy or succulent external covering as in Sterculia ; and 

 the endosperm is fleshy and copious, or reduced to a thin 

 stratum, or entirely wanting. 



The embryo is large and straight, or bent according to the 

 form of the seed ; the cotyledons are generally foliaceous, flat, 

 plicate-corrugate or spirally convolute, more rarely thick and 

 fleshy ; the radicle is short, inferior, and pointing to the hilum, 

 except in some species of Sterculia, which have orthotropous 

 ovules and seeds, in Heritiera littoralis, with amphitropous 

 seeds and possibly some others where the radicle is at the 

 apical end of the seed. 



Two well-marked types of seeds occur in the tribe Sterculieae. 

 In Sterculia itself the ovary consists of five nearly distinct two- 

 to many-ovuled carpels, which separate when mature into one- 



