Brosimum gaudichaudii Trécul, ordinary known as mama-cadela, is an arboreous species common on Brazilian savannah with a great importance on popular food and medicine. The yellow pulp of its fruit is very appreciated by the children because its like a chewing gum. This work presents the morphoanatomical and histochemistry characterization of the inflorescence, fruit and seed of B. gaudichaudii. The material were processed by anatomical and ultrastructural usual techniques. The inflorescence is capitate, globose, pedunculate, pendent, predominant by pairs on leaf axilla and covered by thickly hairy peltate bracts. Each inflorescence is composed of several male flowers and one female flower. The male flowers are constituted by a stamen involved by bracteoles. The female flower is constituted by a pistil with an inferior ovary with five carpels, nevertheless just one develops. It is common the presence of two ovules on developed locule, however just one will develop on a seed. The ovule is pendulous, hemianatropous and bitegmic only on the micropilar region. The mature fruit shows: the pulp which is to the comestible region and endocarp; in the seeds the tegument is membranaceous and the embryo without secondary endosperm. The parenchymatic tissue of the pulp presents a lot of intercellular spaces replete of aqueous content. The endocarp is sclerified and shows to be well differentiable on mature fruit. The laticiferous are non-articulated branched with thick walls occurring on inflorescence receptaculum, being abundant on peduncle and in the pulp of the mature fruit and embryo. The phenolic idioblasts are distributed in the inflorescence and fruit.
Anatomy; Brosimum gaudichaudii; fruit; inflorescence; morphology; seed
