Carolina moonseed

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Carolina moonseed habit

Carolina moonseed fruit

Carolina moonseed

Carolina moonseed

Carolina moonseed leaves

Carolina moonseed fruit

Morphology

Trunk

Stems climbing or clambering; branches unarmed, without tendrils. Bark grayish green to grayish brown, warty, fissured; wood white, soft.

Twigs

Grayish green to grayish brown, flexible, finely ridged, glabrate or finely woolly; leaf scars half-round to depressed elliptic; buds concealed by dense tomentum.

Leaves

Deciduous, alternate, simple; stipules absent; petiole attached at base of blade, .8 to 2.4 inches, finely woolly; blade ovate to triangular or hastate, 2.4 to 4 inches long, 1.8 to 3.4 inches wide, base truncate to cordate, margins entire or shallowly 3-lobed, lobes narrowly to broadly triangular, apex obtuse to acuminate, surfaces abaxially light green, sparsely to densely finely woolly, adaxially green, glabrous or sparsely finely woolly.

Flowers

Dioecious. Inflorescences axillary or terminal on new growth, racemes or racemose panicles, (3-)10-40-flowered, lax, .8 to 9 inches; peduncles .12 to .6 inch; pedicels .12 to .24 inch, glabrous. Flowers unisexual, +/- radially symmetric; sepals 6-9, distinct, lobes white, ovate to elliptic or obovate, .01 to .1 inch, spreading to ascending; petals 6, distinct, yellow, elliptic to triangular, rhombic, or obovate, .02 to .08 inch, spreading to ascending; staminate: stamens (5-)6, to .09 inch; pistillate: staminodes 6; pistils 6, ovary superior, 1-locular; style 1 per pistil, stigma cylindric.

Fruit

September-October; drupes, red, globose, .16 to .3 inch diam., smooth, glabrous, shiny; stone 1, white, snail-shaped, .2 to .24 inch diam., rim warty, sides concave.

Ecology

Habitat

Floodplain and upland forests, stream banks, thickets, fencerows, shrubby hillsides.

Distribution

Southeast quarter of Kansas

Additional Notes