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Ebenaceae: Order Ericales

The document describes the plant family Ebenaceae and some of its key genera and species. Some main points: - Ebenaceae is a family of mostly tropical trees and shrubs known for producing ebony timber and edible fruits like persimmons. - The genus Diospyros contains many important species for timber (ebony), food (persimmons), and medicine. Diospyros kaki is the common persimmon. - Euclea divinorum is a Southern African species used for food, medicine, dye, and other purposes by local people. - Other Ebenaceae genera and species are mentioned briefly.

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John Paul Llido
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228 views21 pages

Ebenaceae: Order Ericales

The document describes the plant family Ebenaceae and some of its key genera and species. Some main points: - Ebenaceae is a family of mostly tropical trees and shrubs known for producing ebony timber and edible fruits like persimmons. - The genus Diospyros contains many important species for timber (ebony), food (persimmons), and medicine. Diospyros kaki is the common persimmon. - Euclea divinorum is a Southern African species used for food, medicine, dye, and other purposes by local people. - Other Ebenaceae genera and species are mentioned briefly.

Uploaded by

John Paul Llido
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Ebenaceae

Order Ericales
Ebenaceae
• Mesophytic trees or shrubs
• Leaves usually alternate, or opposite, or
whorled; usually spiral; leathery, petiolate;
non-sheathing; simple. Lamina entire;
pinnately veined; cross-venulate. Exstipulate.
• Plants mostly dioecious. Or rarely
hermaphrodite. Female flowers with
staminodes, or less often without staminodes.
Gynoecium of male flowers pistillodial, or
vestigial, or absent.
• Flowers solitary (especially when female), or
aggregated in ‘inflorescences’; in cymes. The
ultimate inflorescence unit is cymose.
Inflorescences axillary; small cymes. Flowers
bracteolate; small; regular; (2-)3-5(-7)merous;
cyclic; tetracyclic.
• Fruit is usually fleshy, or occasionally leathery;
usually indehiscent, or rarely indehiscent; a
berry, or a drupe, or rarely a capsule (valvular)
• Seeds are endospermic. Endosperm ruminate,
or not ruminate; oily. Seeds large. Cotyledons
2. Embryo achlorophyllous (1/3); straight, or
curved.
• Seedling germination: phanerocotylar, or
cryptocotylar
• Temperate (a few), or sub-tropical to tropical
(mainly).
• Pantropical, especially Indomalayan, with a
few temperate outliers.
• Economic importance: sources of timber
(ebony) and fruits (mabolo, persimmon)
Genus Diospyros
• Ebony or persimmon trees
Diospyros kaki L.
• English (persimmon, oriental persimmon, keg
fig, kaki plum tree, Chinese fig, Chinese plum,
Japanese persimmon, date plum)
• French (kaki, Plaqueminier kaki)
• German (Kakipflaumenbaum)
• Italian (cachi)
• Japanese (kaki)
• Spanish (kaki del Japon, caqui, kaki)
Native: China, India, Japan, Myanmar
Exotic: Afghanistan, Algeria, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Korea, Republic of,
Palestine, Philippines, Russian Federation, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Former), US,
Vietnam
Products
• Food: fully ripe fruits; roasted seeds (coffee-sub);
high in vitamin & source of ascorbic acid
• Timber: black with streaks of orange-yellow
• Tannin or dyestuff: unripe fruits (sake, wood
preservative)
• Alcohol: fruit  molasses, cider, beer & wine
• Poison: inedible wild fruits
• Medicine: calyx & fruit stem decoction: coughs
• Ornamental
• Boundary or barrier support
Genus Diospyros

• Timber
Food
• combined three
original fruits of Asia:
the khaki, Diospyros
kaki var. Sharon,
the longan,
Dimocarpus longan
and the mangostan,
Garcinia mangostana,
all watered with the
juice of two passion
fruits, Passiflora
edulis.
Other species:
• D. ebenum(black ebony)
• D. celebica (striped ebony or Calamander wood)
• D. virginiana (American persimmon)
• D. melanoxylon (Coromandel ebony) – SA beedi
cigarettes
• D. leucomelas – betulinic acid; herbal

• D. mollis – măc nua in Vietnam; dye famous black


lãnh Mỹ A silk of Tân Châu district.
• Diospyros philippinensis
Other species: flower emblems
• D. celebica (Makaasar ebony; eboni) – provincial tree
of Central Sulawesi
• D. macrophylla (ajan kelicung) – West Nusa Tenggara
• D. ferrea (Yaeyama kokutan) – Ishigaki island in Japan
• D.decandra (Gold Apple) – Thailand: Chanthaburi &
Nakhon Pathom provinces
• D. malabarica (Black-and-White ebony) – Ang Thong
province
• Amphoe Tha Tako – “District of the Diospyros pier”
Genus Euclea
Euclea divinorum Hiern
• English (magic gwarra)
• Luganda (nskizi)
• Swahili (mdaa)
• Tswana (motlhakola)
• Zulu (umhlangula)
Native: Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda,
Zimbabwe
Exotic
Products
• Food: bark (fatty-meat & milk soups); roots (chewed
 red color of the mouth)
• Fodder: wild animals (rhino, giraffe, grey duiker)
• Fuel: branches as firewood
• Tannin or dyestuff: bark rich in phenolics & tannins;
bark extract (dyeing baskets woven from Hyphaene
petersiana, mokola palm leaves); leather has deep
red colour which is aesthetically pleasingalternative
to black wattle; root (black fllor mats); purple from
boiling the fruit in Ovamboland.
• Alcohol: beer
Products
• Poison: tannic & gallic acid extracts  sufficient
amounts of inhibitory constituents to interfere with
the virulence & growth enamel cavity causing
bacteria in vivo
• Medicine: branches (chewing sticks for oral care);
fruits (strongly purgative); in Kenya, root decoction
(purgative), bark infusion (appetizer)
• Others: pentacyclic triterpenes & naphthoquinones,
lupeol, lepene, betulin, 7-methyljuglone,
isodiospyrin, shinalone, catechin, & the novel 3 beta-
(5-hydroxyferuloyl) lip-20(30)-ene were isolated
Services
• Erosion control: soil protection
• Shade or shelter:
• Reclamation: high tolerance to high arsenic
soils (gold mine pit wastes)
• Others: South Africa – repel witches & other
evil, the branches are hung above entrances
into huts & kraals
• ! Tree Management !
– Plant has remarkable coppicing and root suckering ability 
weediness if not checked  dominate pasture  detrimental to
wildlife and pastoralism…ARBORICIDES!
Other sample species
• Euclea balfourii – threatened according to IUCN 2.3;
endemic to Yemen
• Euclea laurina – threatened according to IUCN 2.3;
endemic to Yemen
• Euclea racemosa (Sea Guarrie or Dune Guarrie)

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