Apodytes

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Apodytes
Apodytes dimidiata
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: (unplaced)
Family: (unplaced)
Genus: Apodytes
E.Mey. ex Arn. (1840)
Species

See text.

Apodytes This genus consists of 3 species of evergreen trees, from tropical northeastern Australia, New Caledonia, Africa and Asia.

Description

All of the species have simple, smooth-edged, leathery leaves and much-branched panicles of small white flowers with recurving petals and conspicuous stamens. The fruits are small drupes with a fleshly appendage on one side attached to the fruit, termed a pseudoaril.
The African species (Apodytes dimidiata) is grown for its attractive display of white blossom and red and black fruit, as well as for shade, screening and hedges. It is also grown in southern Africa for ornament and timber, and a bark preparation is used to drive out intestinal parasites.

Taxonomy

It was previously placed in a broadly circumscribed Icacinaceae, but since that family was split it is unplaced as both family and order rank. Recent research suggest that it is associated with Garryales, though possibly not closely enough to warrant broadening that order to include it.[1]

Cultivation

It adapts readily to gardens in warm-temperate to tropical climates, though growth is not particularly fast and it can be kept to large shrub size. A deep fertile soil suits it best but it will grow in poorer soils. Propagate from fresh seed.

Species

Apodytes beninensis
Apodytes dimidiata ("White Pear")

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Apodytes.
  1. ↑ http://www.mobot.org/mobot/research/apweb/orders/garryalesweb.htm
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