Amborella
Amborella trichopoda is a rare shrub found only in New Caledonia. It is of botanical interest because genetic studies place it at or near the base of the flowering plants. That is, it was the first or nearly the first of the extant flowers to diverge from the others, and so gives us some ideas about what the ancestral flowering plants were like. In newer classifications, Amborella is given its own family and order. The older Cronquist system treated it as a family within the Laurales.
The leaves are alternately arranged, evergreen, simple, with a serrated margin, and about 8-10 cm long.
Amborella produces small flowers 4-8 mm across in loose clusters, each flower with several spirally-arranged tepals. It is dioecious, with each flower producing both stamens and carpels, but with only one sex developing fully and fertile in the flowers of any one plant, the organs of the other sex being undeveloped. The fruit is a red berry, containing a single seed 5-8 mm long.
