Shrubs or small trees, with branches fleshy, cylindrical, containing copious caustic milky latex; monoecious
Leaves
alternate, usually large and fleshy; stipules modified as small but conspicuous dark brown glands
Inflorescence
with sessile cyathia in dichotomously branching axillary cymes, usually crowded into pseudoumbels at branch apices; bracts at base of involucres paired, persistent
Involucres
with an entire (rarely lobed), spreading, furrowed, glandular rim and 5 fringed lobes
Sepals
and petals 0 or rudimentary
Male flowers
reduced to individual stamens which are arranged in 5 groups opposite involucral lobes; stamens shortly exserted from involucre; bracteoles present
Female flowers
: solitary within involucre, surrounded by male flowers, sessile or on short pedicel, pedicel elongating slightly in fruit; perianth reduced to 3-lobed rim below ovary; ovary 3-locular, with 1 pendulous ovule in each locule; styles 3, united below, with bifid stigma
Fruit
a dehiscent capsule
Seeds
with a sessile, often rudimentary caruncle
x = 9 (polyploidy)
Nomenclature:
Synadenium
Boiss.
Boissier: 187 (1862)
Brown: 220 (1915)
White, Dyer & Sloane: 951 (1941)
Carter: 534 (1988)
Webster: 129 (1994)
Distribution & Notes:
Global
: Species 19, Africa
Southern Africa
: Species 1:
Synadenium cupulare
(Boiss.) Wheeler; Northern Province, Mpumalanga to N KwaZulu-Natal
References:
BOISSIER, P.E. 1862.
Euphorbiaceae
[in part]. In A. de Candolle,
Prodromus
15, 2. Victor Masson, Paris
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