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Actinidia

(Genus)

Overview

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Climbing shrubs, glabrous or hairy, indumentum of stellate or simple hairs; pith solid or lamellate. Branches usually with linear< /span>, lengthwise lenticels; winter buds small, enclosed in swollen base of petiole or exposed. Leaves often long petiolate; stipules minute, obsolete, or absent; leaf blade membranous, papery, or leathery, venation penniveined, veinlets reticulate, usually in cross-bars, margin serrate or dentate, rarely entire. Inflorescences cymose, axillary, often pseudo-umbellate, few- or many flowered, or flowers solitary; bracts present, minute. Flowers white, pink, red, yellow, or green, bisexual, plants polygamous or functionally dioecious. Sepals (2-) 5(or 6), distinct or connate at base, imbricate, rarely valvate, persistent or not. Petals (4 or) 5(or more than 5), imbricate. S tamens numerous, in functionally female flowers often with shorter filaments and smaller sterile anthers; filaments slender; anthers yellow, brown, purple, or black, versatile, attached at middle, 2-celled, dehiscing lengthwise, usually divaricate at base. Disk absent. Ovary ovoid, cylindrical, or bottle-shaped, glabrous or hairy, many loculed; ovules numerous per locule; styles as many as carpels (15-30), usually reflexed, persistent, radiating, in functionally female flower elongating after anthesis; rudimentary ovary in functionally male flower very small, with minute styles. Fruit a berry, globose, ovoid, or oblong, spotted with lenticels or not, glabrous or hairy. Seeds numerous, oblong, small, immersed in pulp; testa cartilaginous, reticulate-pitted; albumen copious and abundant; embryo comparatively large, cylindrical, straight, at center of albumen; cotyledons short.

About 55 species: E and S Asia; 52 species (44 endemic) in China.[1]

Photos

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Taxonomy

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The Genus Actinidia is further organized into finer groupings including:

Footnotes

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  1. "Actinidia". in Flora of China Vol. 12 Page 334. Published by Science Press (Beijing) and Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Online at EFloras.org.

Sources

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Last Revised: January 24, 2010
2010/01/24 05:30:27