ALBERT

Description: Small evergreen trees, shrubs or lianas; two genera ( Cansjera and Opilia) are known to be root-parasites. Leaves distichous, simple, usually extremely variable in form and size, entire, exstipulate, pinnately veined; dried leaves mostly finely tubercled by cystoliths located in the mesophyll. Inflorescences axillary or cauliflorous, panicle-like, racemose, umbellate (in Africa) or spicate; bracts narrowly ovate or scale-like, in Opilia peltate, often early caducous. Flowers small, (3—) 4—5) (—6)-merous, mainly bisexual, sometimes unisexual and plants then dioecious ( Gjellerupia, Melientha, and Agonandra) or gynodioecious (Champereia). Perianth with valvate, free or sometimes partly united tepals (in ♀ flowers of Gjellerupia wanting). Stamens as many as and opposite to the tepals (in ♀ flowers only small staminodes); anthers introrse, 2-celled, longitudinally dehiscent. Disk intrastaminal, lobed (lobes alternating with the stamens), annular, or cupular. Ovary superior, 1-celled; style short or none, stigma entire or shallowly lobed. Ovule 1, pendulous from the apex of a central placenta, anatropous, unitegmic and tenuinucellar. Fruit drupaceous, pericarp rather thin, mesocarp ± fleshy-juicy, endocarp woody or crustaceous. Seed large, conform to the drupe, without testa; hilum basal, often in a funnel-shaped cavity. Embryo terete, embedded in rich, oily endosperm, nearly as long as the seed or shorter, with 3—4 linear cotyledons, radicle often very short. Distribution. There are 9 genera with about 30 spp., widespread in the tropics. Rhopalopilia is restricted to Africa and Madagascar, Agonandra to South and Central America. In Malesia: 7 genera, 5 of these only known from the eastern Old World (1 endemic: Gjellerupia in New Guinea); Opilia and Urobotrya occur also in tropical Africa.