Picconia

For other uses, see Picconia (fly).
Picconia
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Plantae
(unranked): Angiosperms
(unranked): Eudicots
(unranked): Asterids
Order: Lamiales
Family: Oleaceae
Tribe: Oleeae
Genus: Picconia
DC.
Species

See text

Picconia (Picconia) is a genus of two species flowering plants in the family Oleaceae. In the laurel forests habitat, of Macaronesia islands of the eastern North Atlantic.[1]

Description

They are evergreen shrubs to trees with large, opposite, entire, shiny, ovoid leaves and numerous flowers. The fruit is a drupe. The flowers are small white and fragrant, followed by one-seeded, olive-like green fruit, ripening to bluish-black.[2] Picconia are native of open spots in the laurel forest of the Canary Islands and Madeira where they are found only in the humid to hyper-humid evergreen forests of the cloud belt.[3] Tree species with laurel-shaped leaves are predominant, forming a dense canopy up to 40 m high that can be hardly trespassed by light, which results in scant vegetation in the understory.[4] Most of these tree species in Africa are ancient paleoendemic[5] species of the genera Laurus, Ocotea, Persea, and Picconia, which in ancient times were widely distributed on the African and European continents.[6][7]

Species

References

Notes
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This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 8/22/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.