A flora of Manila - Rainforestation

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A FLORA OF MANILA
22. EXCOECARIA Linnaeus
Glabrous shrubs or trees with abundant, acrid, milky juice, and alternate
or opposite, entire or nearly entire leaves. Flowers apctalous, small, in
dense, axillary spikes or racemes, dioecious or monoecious, the rachis
glandular beneath or at the sides of the bracts. Male flowers 1 to 3 in
each bract, 2-bracteolate. Sepals 3, small. Stamens 3; filaments free.
Rudimentary ovary none. Female flowers at the base of the male spikes
or racemes, or on separate ones. Calyx 3-fid. Ovary 3-celled; cells 1-
ovuled; styles spreading or recurved. Capsules of 3 cocci, the valves
elastically twisting and separating from the columella. (Greek "blind-
ness," from reputed blinding effect of the milky juice.)
Species 30 or more in tropical Asia, Africa, and Australia, 2 or 3 in
the Philippines.
1. E. agallocha L. Buta, Buta-buta (Tag.); Alipata, Lipata (Vis.).
A glabrous shrub or small tree 1 to 8 m high. Leaves alternate, elliptic-ovate,
oblong-ovate, or ovate, shining, base rounded or acute, apex
acuminate, 6 to 12 cm long, entire or nearly so. Male spikes axillary,
solitary, 5 to 10 cm long, many-flowered. Female flowers in 2 to 3 cm
long racemes, the sepals with a basal gland within. Capsules usually
about 5 mm in diameter, subglobose, smooth.
Along tidal estuaries, fl. May-July, and probably in other months;
throughout the Philippines along the seashore. India to southern China
southward to Australia and Polynesia.
76. ANACARDIACEAE (Cashew or Mango Family)
Trees or shrubs, often with acrid and sometimes milky juice. Leaves
alternate, exstipulate, simple or pinnate. Inflorescence mostly paniculate.
Flowers small, regular, unisexual, polygamous, or perfect. Calyx 3- to
6-partite. Petals 3 to 6, alternate with the sepals, free, imbricate or
valvate in bud. Disk flat, cup-shaped or annular, entire or lobed. Stamens
as many as or twice as many as the petals, rarely fewer or only one,
inserted under, rarely. on the disk; filaments usually subulate; anthers 2celled,
basi- or dorsifixed. Ovary superior, 1- to 5-celled, or in Buchanania
of 5 or 6 free carpels, often rudimentary in the staminate flowers; style 1
to 6, or stigmas subsessile; ovules solitary in the cells. Fruit a 1- to 5-
celled, 1- to 5-seeded drupe.
Genera about 60, species about 500, chiefly tropical, 11 genera and 35
species known from the Philippines.
1. Leaves simple; ovary 1-celled, or of several 1-celled carpels.
2. Fruits seated on a much enlarged fleshy peduncle.
3. Stamens twice as many as the petals, some of them imperfect;
fleshy peduncle large, 5 to 7 cm long 1. Anacardium
3. Stamens as many as the petals; fleshy peduncle sftiall, 1 to 1.^ cm
long 2. Semecarpus
2. Peduncles not at all enlarged.
3. Stamens 1 to 5; carpels 1; fruit a large fleshy edible drupe.
3. Mangifera
3. Stamens 8 or 10; carpels 5; fruit a small drupe 1 cm long or less,
the flesh scanty 4. Buchanania
1. Leaves pinnate; ovary several-celled; fruit ovoid, the stone severalcelled
^.— 5. Spondias