''Rhodoleia'' is a genus of
plant
Plants are the eukaryotes that form the Kingdom (biology), kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly Photosynthesis, photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with c ...
s in the family
Hamamelidaceae
Hamamelidaceae, commonly referred to as the witch-hazel family, is a family of flowering plants in the order Saxifragales. The clade consists of shrubs and small trees positioned within the woody clade of the core Saxifragales. An earlier system ...
. Together with its sister genus ''
Exbucklandia'', ''Rhodoleia'' forms the sister clade to the other 25 genera of Hamamelidaceae. Flowers of ''Rhodoleia'' are bird-pollinated. Nectar-foraging birds including
Japanese white-eyes (''Zosterops japonicus'', Zosteropidae) and
fork-tailed sunbirds (''Aethopyga christinae'', Nectariniidae), avidly visit the flowers, which they also pollinate in the process.
[Gu, L., Z. Luo, D. Zhang, and S. S. Renner. 2010. Passerine pollination of ''Rhodoleia championii'' (Hamamelidaceae) in subtropical China. Biotropica 42(3): 336–341.]
Species include:
*''
Rhodoleia championii''
*''
Rhodoleia henryi''
*''
Rhodoleia macrocarpa''
*''
Rhodoleia stenopetala''
References
External links
Flora of China
Hamamelidaceae genera
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
Hamamelidaceae
{{Saxifragales-stub