Nothoalsomitra I. Telford
Nothoalsomitra I. Telford, Fl. Australia 8: 388. 1982.
Type: Nothoalsomitra suberosa (F.M. Bailey) I. Telford; basionym: Alsomitra suberosa F.M. Bailey, Syn. Queensl. Fl. Suppl. 2: 28. 1888; Bailey s.n. (K?), Australia, Queensland, Euoggera.

Perennial climber with several meters long herbaceous shoots, woody base, and dioecious sex system. The leaves are simple, petiolate, the blade pedately 3-foliolate, the leaflets equal, ovate to lanceolate, up to 11 cm long. The tendrils are bifid. Male flowers are produced in racemes, the female flowers solitary. The receptacle-tube is long and deeply campanulate with five triangular sepals, to 2 mm long. The five petals are up to 6 mm long, white-tomentose on the outside, yellow inside. The three stamens are inserted near the mouth of the tube on free, relatively long filaments. Two anthers are bithecous, one monothecous, all appressed into a central head. The thecae are flexuose, triplicate and contain tricolporate, reticulate, medium-sized pollen (polar axis c. 60 µm, equatorial axis c. 63 µm (Khunwasi 1998)). The ovary is ellipsoidal with many, horizontal ovules. The style is short and thick and carries three stigmata with spreading, flexuose lobes. The fruit is fleshy, ellipsoidal, 8-12 cm long and 4-5 cm across, glabrous, indehiscent, ripening variegated green to yellowish. The many seeds are ovoid, 11-13 by 7-9 mm, tumid, and truncate. The testa is brown and smooth without distinct margin.

The only species grows in rainforest and humid Eucalyptus forest of Tropical Northeastern Australia.

Nothoalsomitra is the earliest branching lineage in the tribe Sicyoeae and thus relatively close to Luffa (Schaefer et al. 2009, Schaefer & Renner 2011, Bellot et al., in press).

Literature

Bellot, S., Mitchell, T.C., and H. Schaefer. Phylogenetic informativeness analyses to clarify past diversification processes in Cucurbitaceae. Scientific Reports (in press).

Khunwasi, C. 1998. Palynology of the Cucurbitaceae. Doctoral Dissertation Naturwiss. Fak., University of Innsbruck.

Schaefer, H. and S.S. Renner. 2011. Phylogenetic relationships in the order Cucurbitales and a new classification of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae). Taxon 60: 122-138.

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.