Garryaceae (gare-ee-AY-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Evergreen shrubs and small trees
- Opposite leaves
- Dioecious, with male and female catkins
Description (Jepson)
- Eudicotyledons (eudicots) – a major lineage of flowering plants including most plants traditionally described as dicots and generally characterized by
- 2 seed leaves (dicotyledon)
- Netted (reticulate) leaf venation
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Pollen grains with 3 pores (tricolpate)
- Vascular bundles in stem arranged in a ring
- Taproot system
- Evergreen shrubs and small trees
- Leaves
- Opposite (2 leaves at each junction with stem) and simple (not divided into leaflets)
- Dark green to gray-green, leathery, ovate
- Flowers
- Inflorescence (flower arrangement) a catkin (long hanging cluster of small, petalless, unisexual flowers)
- Male and female flowers on separate plants (dioecious)
- Ovary inferior (below the attachment of other flower parts)
- Fruit is a berry (a usually multi-seeded fruit with a fleshy ovary wall)
Notes
- Small family of plants, commonly known as silk tassels (or silktassels)
- Consists of 1 genus (Garrya) of 14 species found in temperate and subtropical regions of western United States, Central America, and the Caribbean
- Scientific name from the single genus Garrya, for Nicholas Garry (c. 1782-1856), deputy governor of the Hudson Bay Company, in honor of the aid he provided to David Douglas in his 1826 exploration of the Pacific Northwest
- Coast silk tassel (Garrya elliptica) is the only representative of this family at Edgewood
Browse Edgewood Plants in this Family
