Melicope 三腳虌屬
型態特徵
Shrubs (rarely scandent) or trees, unarmed. Leaves opposite or whorled, digitately 3-foliolate or 1-foliolate. Inflorescences thyrsiform or sometimes reduced to single flowers, axillary or on branchlets below leaves or rarely terminal, ramiflorous, or cauliflorous. Flowers small, bisexual or functionally unisexual; sepals 4; petals 4, distinct, valvate or narrowly imbricate; stamens (rudimentary in female flowers) 8 or 4, distinct; disc intrastaminal, pulvinate to annular or cupular; gynoecium (a rudimentary replica of the functional gynoecium or sometimes obsolete in male flowers) 4-carpellate, the carpels connate basally or up to their full length, with a common apical style or the stylar elements rarely becoming divergent, the stigma punctiform to capitate, peltate, or 4-branched, the ovules 2 or sometimes 1 per carpel. Fruit of 1–4 basally connate follicles (the abortive carpels, if any, persistent) or grading to syncarpous (carpels united into a 4-locular, loculicidally dehiscent capsule). Seeds solitary or in pairs, remaining attached in dehisced fruit; testa with thick inner layer of dense, black sclerenchyma and spongy outer layer bounded externally by a shiny, black pellicle.
Malagasy and Indo-Himalayan regions eastward to the Hawaiian and Marquesas Islands and south to New Zealand. About 240 species; three in Taiwan.
As presently construed, Melicope includes the majority of species described in Euodia J. R. & G. Forst. This classification, which was proposed in a revision of Tetradium Lour. (Hartley in Gard. Bull. Sing. 34: 91–131) is based mainly on fruit and seed characters. Essentially, Euodia, which consists of seven species and ranges from New Guinea and northeastern Australia east to Samoa, differs from Melicope in having non-shiny, non-pelliculose seeds which are forcibly expelled when the fruit dehisces. These features, among others, also serve to distinguish Euodia from Tetradium, with which it was long confused. Revisions of Euodia and Melicope are in preparation.
In the Melicope synonymies which follow, and in the synonymies given under Tetradium, the original spelling Euodia is used throughout, correcting the variant spelling Evodia, which was used by most of the authors.
