Abstract: Euptelea Sieb. et Zucc. is a genus of 2 species, endemic to East Asia and disjunctly distributed in China and Japan. The present paper deals with cytology and embryology of the Chinese species E.pleiospermum Hook. f. et Thoms., providing materials for discussing the classificatory rank and relationships of the genus. This work reports the chromosome number, n = 14 and 2n = 28 (Plate 1: 1, 2), for E.pleiospermum, which is consistent with that of the Japanese species, E. plyandra Sieb. et Zucc.,reported by Sugiure (1931) and Whitaker (1933). This number is different from those of the related genera, i. e. n=20 or 2n=40 in Trochodendron and 2n = 48(46)in Tetracentron (Cronquist, 1981), and, therefore, the cytological evidence supports the treatmemt of the genus as a separate family by Smith (1945, 1946), Chrlotte and Bailey (1946), Cronquist(1981), Thorne (1983), Dahlgren(1983), Wang (1984). The ovule of E. pleiospermum is anatropous, bitegminous and crassinucellate (Plate 1: 10), the characters which have been already reported by Davis (1966). In addition, the present work shows that in E. pleiospermum the tapetum is glandular, consisting of 2-or 4-nucleate tapetal cells; cytokinesus at meiosis of pollen mother cells is simultaneous; microspore tetrads are mainly tetrahedral; pollen grains are 2-celled (Plate 1: 4, 5, 6, 9), the third megaspore from the micropyle is functional and develops into the Polygonum type of embryo sac, and synergids are of a wide-openly dichotomous filiform apparatus (Plate 2: 14, 18;Fig. 1:4,6). These are the characters reported here for the first time. Due to the lack of embryological da-ta for the related families, it is impossible to make a systematic comparison of embryology.

Key words: Euptelea pleiospermum, chromosome number, microsporogenesis, megasporogenesis, Polygonum type