Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, evergreen or deciduous, often aromatic and resinous; roots commonly with nitrogen-fixing nodules; plants monoecious or dioecious
• Leaves alternate, simple, entire, serrate, irregularly toothed or lobed, often gland-dotted, usually leathery, petiolate; stipules 0
• Inflorescences axillary, ± erect, catkin-like spikes, usually surrounded by 2-6 bracteoles; male spikes often dense, sometimes spikes with male flowers below and female flowers above; female spikes longer or shorter than male
• Flowers inconspicuous, unisexual, occasionally bisexual, wind-pollinated
• Perianth 0
• Male flowers subtended by solitary bracts; stamens 2-8(-20), often 4-6; filaments short, free or ± cohering; anthers dorsifixed, 2-thecous, erect, ovate, extrorsely dehiscing by longitudinal slits; ovary rudimentary
• Female flowers subtended by solitary bracts; bracteoles present or 0; gynoecium 2-carpellate; ovary superior, sessile, 1-locular; ovule solitary, basal, erect; style short; stigmas 2, filiform or occasionally short
• Fruit a drupe, globose or ovoid, usually warty, often covered with white wax, sometimes with gladular dots, enclosed by persistent bracts and bracteoles; endocarp hard
• Seed with little or no endosperm; embryo straight
• x = 8 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Myricaceae
  • Blume: 3 (1829)
  • Bentham: 400 (1880)
  • Engler: 26 (1888)
  • Chevalier: 85 (1901)
  • Killick: 5 (1969)
  • Kubitzki: 453 (1993)
  • White: 173 (1993)
  • Mabberley: 473 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 4, species ± 55, mostly in temperate to subtropical and tropical-montane regions of the world; two monotypic genera: one endemic to New Caledonia and the other to eastern North America
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 9

References:

• BENTHAM, G. 1880. Myricaceae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• BLUME, C.L. 1829. Myricaceae. In Flora Javae 17-18. Frank, Brussels
• CHEVALIER, A.J.B. 1901. Monographie des Myricacées; anatomie et histologie, organographie, classification et déscription des espèces, distribution géographique. Mémoires de la Société des Sciences Naturelles de Cherbourg 32
• ENGLER, A. 1888. Myricaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3,1
• KILLICK, D.J.B. 1969. The South African species of Myrica. Bothalia
• KUBITZKI, K. 1993. Myricaceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• MABBERLEY, D.J. 1997. The plant-book, edn 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• WHITE, F. 1993. African Myricaceae and the history of the Afromontane flora. Opera Botanica 121

Resources:

• Myricaceaes genus: Morella