Rhamnaceae (ram-NA-see-ee)
Iconic Features
- Small trees or woody shrubs
- Small numerous flowers in tight clusters
- Simple leaves with curved, pinnate veins
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
- Usually small trees or woody shrubs
- Leaves
- Simple (not divided into leaflets)
- Veins are curved and pinnate (arranged along a common axis like a feather)
- Usually alternate (1 leaf at each junction with stem)
- Spines, modified from leaves, occur in many genera
- Flowers
- Inflorescence (flower arrangement) in many forms
- Radially symmetrical, small to tiny, and numerous, usually in dense clusters
- Flower parts in fours and fives
- Ovary superior (above the attachment of other flower parts) or partly inferior (partly below the attachment of other flower parts)
- Fruit is a drupe (a fleshy fruit with usually 1 seed in a hard inner shell — a stone fruit) or capsule (a dry, multi-chambered fruit that splits open at maturity)
Notes
- Approximately 950 species worldwide
- Includes buckbrush, redberry, and coffeeberry
- Scientific name from the genus Rhamnus, from the Greek for “buckthorn”
- Represented by 4 species at Edgewood
Browse Some Edgewood Plants in this Family
