Les inflorescences des Melastomataceae guyanaises, leur filiation et leur valeur taxonomique

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Abstract
Analysis of the inflorescence structures of 188 species from French Guyana belonging to the Melastomataceae (Myrtales) confirms that the panicle (of flowers or cymes) is the inflorescence which, under the effect of a homogenization process, gives rise to the determinate raceme (a single raceme of flowers or of cymes, or more rarely, a double raceme), and later by truncation, the indeterminate raceme. The impoverishment of these flowering units can give rise to triads which correspond to uninodal racemes morphologically identical with dichasia (triflorous cymes), albeit of a different origin, since the cyme is considered as resulting from the enrichment of a flower and thus assimilated to the latter as a flowering unit. Extreme impoverishment of these uninodal racemes gives rise to a single flower. Melastomataceae have two peculiar features: successively developing pauciflorous groups and long proliferous shoots with short side shoots specifically for flowering. Within the framework of intrafamily classification, all these inflorescences, by virtue of their great diversity and the series of links between their structural variations, may constitute an essential basis for research on phylogenetic links between taxonomic groups.

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