Danae racemosa Slender shrub to 2m, with tough green stems. Leaves reduced to scales, but replaced by lanceolate cladodes (flattened branchlets). Flowers small and hanging in a short spike at the top of the stem, green and globose. Sepals and petals similar, fleshy, reduced to 6 lobes. Stamens 6. Ovary superior, with 1 or 2 cells and 1 short style. Pollination mechanism is unknown, but the flowers are probably self-pollinated. The fruits are fleshy, red berries with usually 1 seed.
Key Recognition Features The flat, shiny, leaf-like cladodes and spikes of small, round, green flowers.
Evolution and Relationships The Liliaceae, which included nearly all genera with 6 stamens and an inferior ovary, is now divided into several smaller families, the exact delimitation of which is still being studied. One is Convallariaceae, with berries with few seeds and without the black skin found in other groups, distinctions supported by DNA evidence. Danae is close to Ruscus and to Semele Kunth, a robust, twining climber from the Canary Islands and Madeira, which has small groups of flowers on the margins of the cladodes.
Ecology and Geography In oak woods in the Amanus Mountains in southern Turkey and in adjacent Syria; also in northern Iran and the Talish Mountains.
Comment An unusual evergreen, long cultivated in Turkey and the rest of southern Europe, as well as in old gardens in the southeastern United States.