Fruit capsule usually dehiscent, septifragal or
loculicidal, rarely indehiscent; seeds usually winged, rarely without wings (Woodson et al., 1973; Gentry, 1980; Lohmann, 2004).
The fruits of this subspecies are red,
loculicidal capsules with a fleshy pericarp, bitter and astringent.
possible enclosure in a persistent floral tube, a superior ovary with axile placentation, eight locules,
loculicidal dehiscence, and possibly two rows of seeds (described as two seeds in each locule, but serial diagrams suggest the condition may be two or more rows of seeds per locule), and an undifferentiated seed coat.
Sentences like this one--though my favorite in all economics--might possibly help explain why he didn't quite get through: "If we are getting restless under the taxonomy of a monocotyledonous wage doctrine and a cryptogamic theory of interest, with involute,
loculicidal, tomentous and moniliform variants, what is the cytoplasm, centrosome or karyokinetic process to which we may turn, and in which we may find surcease from the metaphysics of normality and controlling principles?"
According to Peng and Tobe (1987), in Ludwigia (Onagraceae), a
loculicidal dehiscence occurs when the opening is along the midrib of each carpel.
The fossil and living taxa share the following characters: persistent floral tube, valvate sepals (unknown in Minsterocarpum), superior ovary, axile placentation, capsular fruit,
loculicidal dehiscence (unknown in fossil Decodon), septum attached to outer wall of the valve at dehiscence, multiple anatropous seeds per locule, and a t obtrigonal shaped seed body with a sclerotic inner lining of the seed coat.
Capsule utricle-like but
loculicidal, partially dehiscent ventrally at apex and dorsally at apex, retaining seed; endocarp coriaceous, only near suture slightly sclerified.
Fruit with woody oblong-elliptic capsule,
loculicidal, 2-2.5 cm long; exocarp finely verruculose and densely fissured (at fruit senescence, the exocarp is represented only by its venation net attached to the peduncle), elliptic elongated valves, acuminate; peduncle 0.6-1.0 cm long and 0.3-0.5 cm wide
In contrast, Baxteria has explosively ballistochorous fruits derived from capsules with both
loculicidal and septicidal dehiscence (Fig.
Capsule
loculicidal; perennials, hemicrytophytes, suffrutescent herbs, subshrubs, shrubs; stem apices at least vested by stellate trichomes, or stellate and glandular hairs, stipules not as above, if stem trichomes almost all simple subapically, then hirsute, not appressed, flexible, bent, and also with stipules linear or linear-triangular (W.
The 5-winged fruit, formed from a pentalocular ovary, is a
loculicidal capsule, obovate in outline with a truncate apex and rounded base.
Of these characters, the septicidal capsule is the most consistent, with a single reversal to
loculicidal in the Ericeae and subsequently back to septicidal in Calluna.