Hampea Schltdl.
Contenido
Descripción
Trees or shrubs, mostly dioecious, glabrate or stellate-pubescent. Leaves petiolate, elliptic, ovate, or weakly lobed, entire, minutely gland-dotted, with one or more abaxial foliar nectaries; stipules caducous, not prominent. Flowers solitary in the leaf axils or in axillary fascicles, generally in greater abundance in staminate than in pistillate plants, each flower subtended by an involucel of 3 (or rarely more) inconspicuous bractlets, sometimes also by 3 involucellar nectaries; calyx more or less truncate; petals pallid, gland-dotted, refiexed; staminate flowers usually with short (rudimentary) staminal column and numerous exserted anthers, gynoecium absent; pistillate flowers with rudimentary androecium, recurved style, 3-4 decurrent stigmatic lobes. Capsules globose to elongate, dehiscent, 3-4-loculate, densely puberulent; seeds 1-several per locule, glabrous, arillate, the aril fleshy, white (when fresh), surrounding half of seed. Base chromosome number: x = 13.A
Discusión taxonómica
Hampea is a Neotropical genus, extending from central Mexico (Colima, Veracruz, Yucatán) to Colombia. Fryxell (1969c) recognized sixteen species (including two varieties); five additional species have been described more recently. A major center of diversity for the genus is in the Chiapas-Guatemala region. The plants are sometimes large shrubs but more commonly small to large trees. In the past the genus frequently (but mistakenly) has been placed in the Bombacaceae.A