It resembles Stephania reticulata but S. crebra has larger flowers but smaller drupes and endocarps.
|
|
The endocarps then fall, leaving the seeds hanging on the tree. The seed is shiny and black with its lower third covered by an orange aril.
|
|
It possesses a lignified endocarp or "stone" which often contains key information when distinguishing between closely related species of Symplocaceae. Symplocaceae endocarps are open at the apex with multiple chambers ranging in number from one to five but generally three chambered. These chambers hold seeds and protect them from damage. Most Symplocaceae endocarps have ridging on the surface of the endocarp and a basal pit opposite the open apex.
|
|
The seed is surrounded by two endocarps which fall away and litter the ground below. To those who live where it grows, it is known as cedro caracolito, the "little snail cedar", because the larger of the two endocarps resembles a small shell. The wood of Ruptiliocarpon is light and used in cabinet-making, but is often overlooked by wood harvesters.Hammel, 1993Barry E. Hammel and Nelson A. Zamora (1993).
|
|
10 fossil endocarps of †Ficus potentilloides from the early Miocene, have been found in the Kristina Mine at Hrádek nad Nisou in North Bohemia, the Czech Republic. These fossils are similar to endocarps of F. carica.A review of the early Miocene Mastixioid flora of the Kristina Mine at Hrádek nad Nisou in North Bohemia, The Czech Republic, January 2012 by F. Holý, Z. Kvaček and Vasilis Teodoridis - ACTA MUSEI NATIONALIS PRAGAE Series B – Historia Naturalis • vol. 68 • 2012 • no.
|
|
Giant white-tailed rats eat the seeds both on the tree and the ground. The hollowed out woody endocarps often remain around the base of the parent tree as they break down slowly.
|
|
Prunus kansuensis can be difficult to distinguish from its close relatives P.mira (Tibetan peach), P.davidiana (Chinese wild peach), and P.persica (domestic peach), especially if only vegetative characters are used. Many specimens of P.kansuensis are shrubs, whereas most specimens of the other species are trees. P.kansuensis and P.mira have smooth endocarps (covering of the seed) but P.davidiana and P.persica endocarps have the typically pitted appearance seen in domestic peaches. P.kansuensis can be distinguished from P.mira by having externally pubescent (or rarely subglabrous) sepals; P.mira sepals are externally glabrous.
|
|
The petals are elliptic to obovate, also only 1mm long and hairy. The flowers have 35 to 45 stamens each, with 1.5mm long filaments and 0.5 to 0.7mm long anthers. The fruits are purplishblack when ripe, have thick mesocarps, and endocarps which are glabrous inside. Its seeds have glabrous testa.
|
|
Inflorescences are large and pendulous; the male flowers are much smaller than the female and are borne in clusters within catkin-like structures. Fruits contain hard, woody endocarps surrounding the seeds; they range in size from date-sized (Latania) to the massive fruits of Lodoicea, which contain the largest seed in the world.
|
|
Fossil endocarps with characteristics indistinguishable from those of modern peaches have been recovered from late Pliocene deposits in Kunming, dating to 2.6 million years ago. In the absence of evidence that the plants were in other ways identical to the modern peach, the name Prunus kunmingensis has been assigned to these fossils.
|
|
The ovules are attached to the partition, near its top. The two stigmas are short and attached directly to the apex of the ovary. The fruit is a capsule, 2.5 to 3.5 cm long and 1.5 to 2.5 cm wide, containing one, or rarely, two seeds. The capsule breaks up and its pieces fall, leaving the seed and the surrounding endocarps.
|
|
In parts of the Colombian Llanos endocarps are used to play games. The range of the species is found in dry forests between sea level and 1700 m (5600') above sea level in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago and Venezuela, but is not native to Ecuador. The species is cultivated as an ornamental throughout the tropics. Many authors, including Henderson et al.
|
|
The fossil record of Symplocaceae is well documented with fossils appearing in the current range as well as in Europe and further into North America. The fossil record does much to confirm the biogeographic connection between North America and East Asia which is already well established in the paleobotanical field. Much of the surviving fossil record is from pollen and the bony endocarps, but leaf imprints exist as well.
|
|
2009 - 576 pages, , 9780191560156. Although the mosaic of characters in Hironoia precludes assignment to an extant genus, the fiber rather than sclereid composition of the fruit places it within the Nyssaceae- Mastixiaceae. Other possible Cornaceae from Cretaceous sediments include endocarps resembling Cornus from the Santonian-Campanian mesofossil assemblage of Åsen. In slightly younger Late Cretaceous sediments (Maastrichtian) four genera of fossil mastixioid fruits (Beckettia, Eomastixia, Mastixicarpum and Mastixiopsis) have been described from Germany.
|
|
Paschalococos disperta - MHNT Paschalococos disperta, the Rapa Nui palm or Easter Island palm, formerly Jubaea disperta, was the native cocoid palm species of Easter Island. It disappeared from the pollen record circa AD 1650. It is not known whether the species is distinct from Jubaea, but there is no evidence that it was Jubaea either, as the soft tissues used for identification of cocoid genera have not been preserved. All that remain are pollen from lake beds, hollow endocarps (nuts) found in a cave, and casts of root bosses.
|
|