Lijndenia laurina Zoll. & Moritzi

Stone, R. Douglas, 2017, Revised treatment of the genus Lijndenia (Melastomataceae, Olisbeoideae) in Madagascar, Candollea 72 (1), pp. 67-86 : 69-70

Typus: Lijndenia laurina Zoll. & Moritzi

Shrubs or small to medium-sized trees, evergreen, glabrous; wood extremely hard; young branchlets terete to distinctly quadrangular (quadrangular-alate in L. melastomoides ). Leaves opposite, petiolate, lacking stipules, subcoriaceous to thickly coriaceous and mostly appearing granular or

Petal color not specified blue to pale bluish-purple pale violet with white white margins papillose-muricate on drying (owing to the presence of ramiform sclereid idioblasts in the mesophyll); leaf-blades ± distinctly 3-nerved (= nervation strongly acrodromous), or in some of the Madagascan spp. apparently uninervate with lateral nerves intramarginal and weaker than the midnerve (= obscurely acrodromous), elliptic (to obovate or oblanceolate in some Madagascan spp.), ± distinctly acuminate at apex. Cymes borne in the leaf-axils or in fascicles at the leafless nodes of older branchlets (lower down on the trunk in L. ramiflora ), ± distinctly pedunculate (the peduncles very short to ± absent in L. laurina , L. danguyana and L. memecyloides ), umbelliform to capitellate (or 2-3X branched with secondary inflorescenceaxes up to 9 mm in L. barteri and L. brenanii ); bracts ± persistent and with a pair of bracteoles partially fused to form a cupule (false calyx) immediately subtending each individual flower. Flowers small, uniformly 4-merous, sessile or borne on long slender pedicels (the latter only in the case of the Madagascan spp.), mostly bisexual (androdioecious in L. laurina ); calyx margin ± distinctly 4-lobed (not truncate); petals mostly white (blue in most of the Madagascan spp.), spatulate to obovate or suborbicular, unguiculate at base, ± auriculate above the claw in the Madagascan spp.; anthers dolabriform, on long slender filaments; oil-gland on dorsal side of anther connective uniformly present in the Madagascan spp., variably present to reduced or absent in the remaining spp.; style slender, exserted from the corolla in bud (the flowers thus being protogynous); top of ovary lacking interstaminal partitions, the epigynous chamber thus appearing smooth; ovary unilocular, ovules 2-12. Fruits berry-like, ± globose, crowned by the persistent calyx; seeds generally solitary (occasionally 2); embryo with a short hypocotyl and leafy cotyledons, the inner cotyledon bent and rolled around the involute edge of the outer cotyledon.