Description :

• Small, usually evergreen, resinous trees or shrubs; schizogenous secretory canals present
• Leaves alternate, sometimes clustered towards apex of branchlets, simple, ovate, obovate, spathulate, lanceolate or linear, usually entire, sometimes undulate, rarely subserrate or shallowly lobed, glabrous or pilose, petiolate or subsessile; stipules 0
• Inflorescences variously paniculate or subracemose, terminal or terminal with axillary branches, rarely fascicled
• Flowers bisexual or more often functionally unisexual with large rudiments of nonfunctional sex organs in all flowers, regular, hypogynous, sweet-scented
• Sepals 5, free or slightly connate, imbricate or not, glabrous or pubescent
• Petals 5, free or slightly connate or connate up to about the middle, with claws sometimes connivent and blades usually spreading or revolute, imbricate in bud, white, yellow or greenish
• Stamens 5, alternating with petals, about as long as petals; filaments linear; anthers erect, ovate-oblong, dehiscing by means of longitudinal slits
• Ovary superior, of 2 carpels, paracarpous, usually 1-locular, sessile or shortly pedicellate; ovules few, ovoid, anatropous, unitegmic, on parietal placentas; style simple, short, sometimes conical; stigma simple, capitate or 2-lobed
• Fruit a ± globose or ovoid capsule; valves often 2, entire, leathery or woody, yellow or brown, erect or spreading or reflexed, sometimes splitting through the persistent style
• Seeds 4-8 per valve, in 2 rows on each parietal placenta, 3- or 4-angled on one side, convex on other side, orange to red, covered with a sticky, slow-drying resin
• x = 12

Nomenclature:

• Pittosporum Banks ex Sol.
  • Solander: 286 (1788)
  • Candolle: 345 (1824)
  • Endlicher: 1082 (1840)
  • Sonder: 443 (1860)
  • Bentham: 130 (1862)
  • Oliver: 124 (1868)
  • Pax: 110 (1891) as Pittosporaceae
  • Pritzel: 268 (1928)
  • Cufodontis: 105 (1951)
  • Cufodontis: 27 (1952)
  • Cufodontis: 298 (1960)
  • Franco: 383 (1964)
  • Cufodontis: 1 (1966)
  • Friis: 319 (1987)
  • Friis: 1 (1989)
  • Judd: 15 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 150, Macaronesian Islands, Africa, Madagascar and Mascarenes, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the tropical and warm temperate parts of the Asian mainland, as far north as China to Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, New Caledonia and Polynesia, including Hawaii
• Southern Africa : Species 1: Pittosporum viridiflorum Sims, indigenous, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, Western and Eastern Cape; 2 introduced species in KwaZulu-Natal, Western and Eastern Cape