Systematic importance of leaf and epidermal characteristics of species of the genus Anthocleista Afzel. ex R.Br. in West Africa

Samples from nine species of Anthocleista were collected from major extant forest and herbaria in the West African countries of Nigeria, the Republic of Benin and Ghana for identification and conservation. They were assessed in the field and in the laboratory for their morphological and anatomical characteristics. Their leaf shapes are elliptic, oblong, obovate or oblanceolate. The leaf length ranged from 8 cm to 70 cm; width was between 3 cm and 28 cm. They generally possess either anisocytic or anomocytic stomata, and two species are amphistomatic in nature. Trichomes are either stellate, dendritic or both with varying number of arms and arm length. Their leaf epidermal cuticle is coated with either soft wax or scale and plate types of ornamentation. Principal component analysis and unweighted pair group method with arithmetic average revealed that the leaf shape and size, phyllotaxy, inflorescence, epidermal cell dimension, stomata indices, trichome density and wax coating are sufficient to delimit this economically useful genus in their populations both for their medicinal importance and conservation purposes.