Batidaceae

Dioecious or monoecious small shrubs with thick woody roots. Leaves simple, opposite, sessile, fleshy, with a distinctly saccate, colourless base. Stipules minute. Flowers unisexual, either solitary and terminal or axillary, or in small axillary spikes. ♂ Flowers subtended by bracts, enclosed in a membranous spathella which opens with one or two transverse or radial slits giving rise to 2-4 lobes. Tepals 4, valvate. Stamens 4, alternitepalous; anthers dorsifixed, introrse, dehiscing lengthwise with 2 slits. Sometimes an abortive gynaecium present. ♀ Flowers merely consisting of a naked ovary, in the axil of leaves when solitary, in the axil of cordate bracts when growing in spikes, 2-carpellate, 4-celled by one true and one false septum; ovules 1 in each cell, basal, anatropous, with a long funicle. Stigmas 2, sessile, distinctly papillate. Fruit a septicidal berry dehiscing with 2 valves, either solitary or many united together with the bracts into a connate, spikelike whole. Seeds with a large, straight embryo, exalbuminous. Distr. The Batidaceae, consisting of one genus with two species, show a remarkably discontinuous area, viz B. maritima L. growing along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of tropical America, the Hawaiian and Galapagos Islands, while B. argillicola has hitherto only been found in South New Guinea. As the distribution of the species is still rather insufficiently known and they are confined to littoral districts it has been found advisable to include both of them in the key given below.