Genus of flowering plants
Hedycarya is a genus of about 16 species of flowering plants in the family Monimiaceae native to eastern Australia, New Zealand, and some Pacific Islands. Plants in the genus "Hedycarya" are shrubs, or small to medium trees with sometimes toothed leaves. The male and female flowers cup-shaped and are borne on separate plants. Male flowers usually have 8 tepals and many stamens and female flowers are have 6 to 12 tepals with many carpels. The fruit is a cluster of drupes.
Description.
Plants in the genus "Hedycarya" are shrubs, or small to medium trees with male and female flowers on separate plants. Its leaves are papery to slightly leathery, sometimes regularly and coarsely toothed. The flowers are borne in more or less cup-shaped, raceme-like cymes or panicles in leaf axils or on the ends of branches, with up to 20 flowers. Male flowers usually have many stamens, the filaments very short to absent and female flowers have many carpels with a short, thick stigma and sometimes staminodes. The fruit is a loose to tight cluster of drupes.
Taxonomy.
The genus was "Hedycarya" was first formerly described in 1776 by botanists Johann and Georg Forster in "Characteres Generum Plantarum".
The limit of the genus may require change as it appears paraphyletic in phylogenetic analyses, with the genera "Kibaropsis" and "Levieria" nested in it.
Species.
The names of 16 species of "Hedycara" are accepted by the Plants of the World Online as at May 2024.
References.
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