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Vascular Plants of California
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Mortonia

Higher Taxonomy
Family: CelastraceaeView DescriptionDichotomous Key

Common Name: STAFF-TREE FAMILY
Habit: Shrub (climbing or not), tree, thorny or not, generally glabrous. Leaf: simple, opposite or alternate, deciduous to persistent, subsessile or petioled; veins pinnate. Inflorescence: cluster, cyme, raceme, panicle, or 1-flowered, axillary or terminal, bracted. Flower: generally bisexual, radial, small; hypanthium +- cup-shaped; sepals 4--5; petals (0)4--5, free; stamens 4--5, alternate petals, attached below or to rim of disk; ovary superior or +- embedded in disk, 2--5-chambered, placentas axile or basal, style generally 1, short, stigma +- head-like, 2--5-lobed. Fruit: capsule, winged achene, berry, drupe, or nutlet, often 1-chambered. Seed: generally 1 per chamber, arilled.
Genera In Family: 50 genera, 800 species: worldwide, especially southeastern Asia; some ornamental (Celastrus, Euonymus, Maytenus, Paxistima).
eFlora Treatment Author: Michael A. Vincent & Barry A. Prigge
Scientific Editor: Thomas J. Rosatti.
Mortonia
Habit: Shrub, erect, scabrous. Leaf: alternate, persistent, ascending, leathery, entire; margin generally thicker. Inflorescence: panicle, terminal, many-flowered. Flower: parts in 5s; hypanthium obconic; petals white; disk fused to hypanthium except at top, fleshy, +- white, in age red-purple; ovary superior, narrowly ovoid, stigma lobes 5, slender, spreading. Fruit: nutlet 1, oblong-cylindric, light brown. Seed: 1, straw-colored, difficult to separate from fruit; aril 0.
Species In Genus: 5 species: southwestern United States, Mexico. Etymology: (S.G. Morton, American botanist, physician, 1799--1851)
Jepson eFlora Author: Michael A. Vincent & Barry A. Prigge
Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange)

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Citation for this treatment: Michael A. Vincent & Barry A. Prigge 2012, Mortonia, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=9805, accessed on April 26, 2024.

Citation for the whole project: Jepson Flora Project (eds.) 2024, Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/, accessed on April 26, 2024.