Chamguava: A New Genus of Myrtaceae (Myrtinae) from Mesoamerica. L. R. Landrum. 1991. Systematic Botany
Shrubs or trees to 20 m tall; trichomes whitish, reddish brown, or yellowish brown, unicellular, simple, up to ca. 0.3 mm long; twigs tending to branch dichotomously. Leaves persistent, coriaceous to submembranous, the venation brochidodromous, the midvein impressed above, prominent below, the laterals 14-30(40) pairs, weak, the marginal weak and nearly paralleling the margin. Inflorescence a solitary flower or clusters of up to 4 flowers (probably abbreviated bracteate shoots) in the axils of leaves or at leafless nodes on older twigs, the peduncles uniflorous. Flowers tetramerous, sessile or shortly peduncled; bracteoles small, caducous at about anthesis; calyx closed or with separate calyx-lobes, mostly persisting until the fruit matures; petals whitish; stamens 75-160, folded centerwards in the bud, whitish, the filaments always a few to many times longer than the anthers in the bud; anthers 0.5-0.8 mm long, glandular or not; ovary bilocular, the placenta usually subpeltate (merely a stalk-like peg in C. musarum), the stalk of the placenta attached above center; ovules (2)4-80 per locule, multiseriate, radiating from the placenta. Fruit a globose berry. Seeds few, subreniform, 6-10 mm long; embryo starchy, with no obvious oil except for superficial glands, not smooth when cut dry, crescent-shaped; cotyledons relatively small or not apparent; hypocotyl greatly thickened, the central core about 1/5-1/8the total diameter of hypocotyl.
