Meliaceae

Meliaceae Juss., Gen. P1. (1789) 263 (‘Meliae’); T.D. Penn. & Styles, Blumea 22 (1975) 419—540; Mabb. in Fl. Nouv.-Caléd. et Dép. 15 (1988) 17—89; Mabb. & Pannell in Tree Fl. Malaya 4 (1989) 199—260. Cedrelaceae R.Br. in Flinders, Voy. Terra Austr. 2, App. (1814) 64 (‘ Azedarachaceae Cedreleae’). Schultes in Roem. & Schultes, Syst. Veg. 5 (1819) xxxviii (‘familia Aitoniaceae Azedaracharum’). (Harv.) Harv., Fl. Cap. 1 (1860) 243 (‘ Aitonieae’). Trees, treelets, often pachycaul or, more rarely, shrubs or suckering shrublets, monopodial or sympodial, rarely with Terminalia-branching (Vavaea), dioecious, polygamous, monoecious or with all flowers hermaphrodite. Indumentum of simple, bifid or stellate hairs or stellate or peltate scales or sometimes mixtures of these, sometimes with small glands. Buds naked or with scale-leaves (in Malesia only in subfam. Swietenioideae). Leaves exstipulate (occasionally pseudostipules present), spirally arranged, rarely decussate, pinnate (sometimes with a terminal ‘bud’, i.e. pseudogemmula), trifoliolate, with a single blade (simple or unifoliolate) or rarely bipinnate (Melia); rachis very rarely winged; leaflets usually entire, rarely lobed or serrate (or spinous, not in Malesia), sometimes with minute black glandular dots. Inflorescences thyrsoid, racemose or spicate, sometimes reduced to fascicles or solitary flowers, axillary, supra-axillary, ramiflorous, cauliflorous to groundlevel or rarely epiphyllous ( Chisocheton). Flowers² hermaphrodite and/or more usually, unisexual, with well developed rudiments of opposite sex. Calyx usually ± lobed, sometimes with discrete sepals, these occasionally spirally arranged and transitional to bracteoles (Dysoxylum), sometimes truncate or closed in bud and circumscissile at base at anthesis. Petals 3—7(—14), in 1 whorl, rarely (some Chisocheton species) in a spiral to give up to 2 (apparent) whorls, green, white, cream, pink to claret and violet or yellow (Aglaia). Stamens usually partially or completely united by a tube with or without lobes; anthers 3—10(—30) in 1 or, rarely, 2 or more whorls, sometimes locellate, at tips of filaments or at the margin of the tube or within its throat. Disk (at least sometimes nectariferous) around ovary, cushion-like, tubular or absent. Ovary (l—)2—6(—20)-locular, each locule with 1—many ovules; stylehead discoid to capitate. Fruit a capsule, berry or drupe. Seed with fleshy aril or sarcotesta or a combination of these or winged and then attached to a woody columella, or with corky outer layers, or very rarely without any of them, endosperm usually absent; cotyledons collateral, superposed or, rarely, oblique, emergent or not at germination, when scale leaves are sometimes produced before first foliage leaves, which may be opposite or spirally arranged, simple or pinnate with later ones simple to bipinnate. 2n = 16—c. 360.