Linaceae

Linaceae

[lī′nās·ē‚ē]

(botany)

A family of herbaceous or shrubby dicotyledonous plants in the order Linales characterized by mostly capsular fruit, stipulate leaves, and exappendiculate petals.

McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Linaceae

 

(flax), a family of dicotyledonous plants, including grasses, subshrubs, and shrubs. The simple leaves, which are alternate or rarely opposite, have small stipules or, rarely, are exstipulate. The flowers are bisexual, regular, and five-parted (rarely four-parted). There are six genera, with approximately 250 species, found primarily in temperate and subtropical regions; some species, however, are found the tropics of the Old World. The families Hugoniaceae, Ixonanthaceae, and Humiriaceae are often included in the Linaceae. Using this classification, the family Linaceae has more than 25 genera, comprising approximately 500 species, and includes trees and lianas. These 25 genera are distributed from the tropics to the temperate regions of both hemispheres. There are two genera in the USSR— Linum and Radiola, with the latter having one species.

REFERENCES

Iuzepchuk, S. V. “L’novye-Linaceae Dumort.” In Flora SSSR, vol. 14. Moscow-Leningrad, 1949.
Takhtadzhian, A. L. Sistema i filogeniia tsvetkovykh rastenii. Moscow-Leningrad, 1966.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.