Iodes
Content
Description
Dioecious climbing shrubs or lianas.
Branchlets hairy, generally bearing shortly bifid tendrils at or closely to the nodes (but not axillary!).
Leaves decussate, entire, apiculate by a somewhat projecting midrib, penninerved, with ± appressed and strigose and/or softer, erect or obliquely spreading coarse hairs on midrib, nerves, veins and veinlets, and sometimes besides with a tomentum of very short fine substellate hairs which covers the intervenium beneath.
Inflorescences in peduncled cymes which may be combined to panicles, axillary, supra-axillary or a little lateral from the nodes, sometimes terminal, solitary, the ♂ ones often elongate and many-flowered, the ♀ ones generally shorter and rather few-flowered;
Flowers small, white to cream or yellowish, fragrant.
Petals 4 or 5, or sometimes wanting in ♀, valvate in bud, generally connate at base only, rarely and only in ♂ connate to ½ to ¾ of their length into a tube, only the reflexed lobes free, a little keeled inside, tips sometimes narrowed and inflexed already in bud, persistent in ♀.
Seed 1, albuminous;
Distribution
Asia-Temperate: Hainan (Hainan present), Asia-Tropical: Assam (Assam present); New Guinea present; Thailand (Thailand present), Burma present, Madagascar present, SE. Asia present present, SW.-SE. China present, Tropical Africa present
About 16 spp. in tropical Africa (and Madagascar), 3 spp. in SE. Asia (Assam and Burma to SW.-SE. China, Hainan, Indo-China, and Thailand), throughout Malesia (7 spp.), but in New Guinea only questionably known from a single old collection; 2 Malesian spp. also known from SE. Asia. .
Anatomy
ROBINSON () has investigated the anatomy of the stem of I, cirrhosa TURCZ. Vascular strands are formed here also in the pith, though the bast and wood elements are inversed.
Notes
For the determination of the various species the indumentum plays an important role. The use of a lens is necessary, and only leaves of ± the same state of maturity should be investigated or compared.
Mappianthus differs from Iodes only by rather vague characters such as filaments rather long in proportion to the length of the petals and a drupe with a finely grooved and tubercled exocarp. It is regarded here as congeneric, a point of view already expressed by BAILLON, who, however, created for I. hookeriana a proper sect. Lasiodes ().
Mappianthus differs from Iodes only by rather vague characters such as filaments rather long in proportion to the length of the petals and a drupe with a finely grooved and tubercled exocarp. It is regarded here as congeneric, a point of view already expressed by BAILLON, who, however, created for I. hookeriana a proper sect. Lasiodes ().