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:

• Pittosporaceae
  • Brown: 542 (1814) as Pittosporeae
  • Candolle: 345 (1824)
  • Endlicher: 1081 (1840)
  • Sonder: 443 (1860)
  • Bentham: 130 (1862)
  • Pax: 106 (1891)
  • Pritzel: 265 (1928)
  • Cufodontis: 298 (1960)
  • Cufodontis: 1 (1966)
  • Friis: 319 (1987)
  • Mabberley: 562 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 9; species ± 200, native mostly to the Old World tropics and subtropics, from Africa to Pacific, 8 genera endemic to Australasia, not in America
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 3 (2 exotic)

References:

• BENTHAM, G. 1862. Pittosporeae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• BROWN, R. 1814. Pittosporeae. M. Flinders, A voyage to Terra Australia 2. Nicol, London
• CANDOLLE, A.P. DE. 1824. Pittosporeae. Prodromus 1. Treuttel & Würtz, Paris
• CUFODONTIS, G. 1960. Pittosporaceae. Flora zambesiaca 1
• CUFODONTIS, G. 1966. Flora of tropical East Africa. Pittosporaceae
• ENDLICHER, S.L. 1840. Pittosporeae. Genera plantarum secundum ordines naturales disposita. Beck, Vienna
• FRIIS, I. 1987. A reconsideration of Pittosporum in Africa and Arabia. Kew Bulletin 42,2
• MABBERLEY, D.J. 1997. The plant-book, edn 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• PAX, F. 1891. Pittosporaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3,2a
• PRITZEL, E. 1928. Pittosporaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2,18a
• SONDER, O.W. 1860. Pittosporeae. Flora capensis 1

Resources:

• Pittosporaceae genus: Pittosporum