Fusion of carpels

Whether the carpels of a gynoecium remain distinct or fuse together is a systematic character important for plant classification. An apocarpous gynoecium contains two or more distinct, unfused carpels, and this condition is generally considered the ancestral one within the angiosperms; Annona is a textbook example. A syncarpous gynoecium contains two or more carpels that are fused (connate) together, as in Citrus and tomato; a syncarpous ovary may be unilocular, where the fused carpels share one common chamber, or multilocular (e.g. tetra …