Lemurosicyos.

Lemurosicyos Keraudren
Lemurosicyos Keraudren, Bull. Soc. Bot. France 110: 405. 1963 (publ. 1964).
Type: Lemurosicyos variegata (Cogn.) Keraudren; basionym: Luffa variegata Cogn., Rutenberg s.n. (B), Madagascar, in insula Nossi-Bé, 1878 (destroyed); neotype: Keraudren 1080 (P), designated Keraudren 1963: 405.

Annual climber or trailer with up to 5 m long shoots and monoecious sex system. The leaves are simple, petiolate, with palmately 3-5-lobed blade, the lobes lobulate-dentate and up to 7 cm long. The tendrils are simple. Male flowers are produced in racemes, the female flowers are solitary or in pairs, often coaxillary with the male raceme. The receptacle-tube is campanulate with five small sepals. The five white petals are 3-5 cm long and oblong-lanceolate. The three stamens are inserted in the lower half of the tube on free filaments. Two anthers are bithecous, one monothecous, together they form a central globose head. The thecae are triplicate and contain tricolporate, reticulate, medium-sized pollen (polar axis 65-70 µm, equatorial axis 52 µm, (Keraudren 1968)). The ovary is oblong and pubescent with three placentae and many, horizontal ovules. The style is slender and carries three stigmata. The fruit is a scarlet, fleshy berry, oblong to pear-shaped and slightly hairy. The 25-30 seeds per fruit are oblong, c. 10 mm long and 5 mm broad, and embedded in yellow pulp. The testa is brown, with dentate margin. The chromosome number is n = 12 (Keraudren 1968).

The only species is known just from a few collections in Madagascar and appears to be very rare.

Phylogenetically, Lemurosicyos is closest to the Asian genera Solena and Borneosicyos and the African Cephalopentandra (Schaefer et al. 2009).

Accepted species

Lemurosicyos variegata (Cogn.) Keraudren, Bull. Soc. Bot. France 110: 405. 1963 (publ. 1964).

Literature

Keraudren, M. 1963. Valeur du Luffa variegata Cogn. et description de Lemurosicyos gen. nov. (Cucurbitacees). Bull. Soc. Bot. France 110: 405.

Keraudren, M. 1968. Recherches sur les cucurbitacées de Madagascar. Mém. Mus. Hist. Nat. B 16: 122-330.

Schaefer, H., Heibl, C., and S.S. Renner. 2009. Gourds afloat: a dated phylogeny reveals an Asian origin of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) and numerous oversea dispersal events. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276: 843-851.