Burseraceae |
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Flora of Somalia 2: 183 Plants trees or shrubs, rarely almost climbing, usually secreting resin or oil; outer bark often peeling in flakes, scrolls, strips, or sheets, usually translucent and allowing light to reach the green inner bark. Leaves alternate, spirally arranged, usually compound and imparipinnate or 1-3-foliate, rarely simple or bipinnate; stipules usually absent. Inflorescences panicles, corymbs, racemes, clusters or of solitary flowers. Flowers bisexual or unisexual and the plants often dioecious, radially symmetric, with a hypanthium; receptacle flat to saucer- or cup-shaped. Calyx more or less deeply divided into 3-5(6) lobes; lobes usually valvate. Petals 3-5(6) or absent, valvate or imbricate, almost always free. Stamens outside or on the margins of a disk, usually twice as many as the petals and in 2 whorls, less often as many as the petals. Ovary superior, 2-6(8)-celled, each with 2 pendent ovules, one of which usually aborts. Fruit a 1-5-seeed drupe or an up to 8-seeded pseudocapsule wtih the seeds enclosed in a hard wall, forming a pyrene, an aril-like structure often attached to the pyrene; cotyledons lobed; endosperm almost completely absent. The family Burseraceae includes about 17 genera and 560 species. It is widespread in the tropics and and occasionally sub-tropical. The chief economic product are gum resins (such as frankincense) but some species are valuable timber species. Key to genera in Somaliland and Somalia. Flora of Somalia 2: 184 1a. Fruits dry, with 3-6*8)-celled pseudocapsules; calyx lobes and petals 5; stamens 10; spines absent ......Boswellia
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