作者

HUANG, SHING-FAN and HUANG, TSENG-CHIENG

型態特徵

Annual or perennial, monoecious or dioecious, fleshy herbs parasitic on roots of woody plants, brown, reddish or yellow, without chlorophyll and stomata. Rhizome tuberous, single or branched, scabrous, sometimes scaly. Stem erect, terete, usually scaly. Leaves reduced to scales, alternate. Flowers unisexual, very rarely bisexual, sessile, densely crowded into unisexual or androgynous spicate inflorescences; spike terminal, ellipsoidal, clavate or globose, with stout fleshy axis; bracts absent or present and many. Male flowers larger, interspersed among pistillate ones or at end of spike; perianth wanting or 3- to 8-valvate-lobed; stamens 1 or 2, achlamydeous or (naked) or in those with a perianth often equal in number and opposite the lobes, filaments free or connate into a column, anthers 2- to 4-celled or many-celled, free or connate, opening by pores or slits. Female flowers sessile, minute, densely arranged on surface of axis; perianth none or small and adnate to ovary, rarely free, tubular or bilabiate; ovary 1–3-celled, small; styles 1–2, terminal, stigma rarely sessile, discoid; ovule solitary in each cell, mostly pendulous, nude or with a single integument, or sometimes reduced to an embryosac. Fruits minute, nut-like, indehiscent, 1-celled, 1-seeded. Seeds globose, with copious oily endosperm and very small embryo, undifferentiated.

屬

About 18 genera with nearly 100 species, mainly in the tropics and subtropics of the Old World; one genus in Taiwan.

參考文獻

• HUANG, SHING-FAN and HUANG, TSENG-CHIENG, Flora of Taiwan, second edition 2: 287. 1996.  (Fl. Taiwan 2nd edit.)