Abstract
Shrubs 0.5–2 m tall, often with spines. Leaves alternate or fasciculate, petiolate to subsessile, simple, fleshy, often with short appressed hairs, cuneate at base and acute, 3-lobed or retuse at apex; stipules minute, intrapetiolar, free, often caducous. Flowers 5-merous, bisexual (dioecious in Nitraria billardieri), small, pedicellate, solitary or aggregated into lax scorpioid cymes, caducous bracts sometimes present; sepals distinct, imbricate or united at base, persistent; petals concave, yellowish-green or white; disk small, fleshy; stamens (10)15, without appendages; filaments inserted at margin of disk; anthers oblong, dorsifixed, versatile; ovary superior, sessile, oblong-pyramidal, silky, 3(6)-carpellate, simple, narrowing gradually with 3(6) decurrent stigmatic lobes at apex; ovule 1 per carpel, pendulous, apotropous, bitegmic, crassinucellar. Fruit a berry-like drupe with long bony endocarp, 1-seeded, derived from single fertile loculus. Seed pendulous, ovoid-acuminate, exalbuminous but contains oil. 2n=24, 48, 60.
Nitrariaceae Bercht. & J. Presl (1820), nom. cons. Nitrarioideae Engl. (1896).
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Sheahan, M.C. (2010). Nitrariaceae. In: Kubitzki, K. (eds) Flowering Plants. Eudicots. The Families and Genera of Vascular Plants, vol 10. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-14397-7_15
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