Description:

• Trees or shrubs, generally with milky latex and 2-armed hairs (1 arm often reduced or 0)
• Leaves alternately or spirally arranged, simple, entire, petiolate, often leathery; stipules present or 0, usually falling early
• Flowers regular, usually bisexual or sometimes female by reduction of stamens, solitary or in axillary clusters or on bare branches or stems, white or cream, scented, often bat-pollinated
• Calyx with sepals ± free, either in 1 whorl with (4)5(6), or in 2 whorls with 3 or 4 sepals each
• Corolla with a short cylindric to campanulate tube with 1 or 2 whorls of 2-5 entire, lobed to divided petals
• Stamens as many as corolla lobes and opposite them or more numerous and in 2 whorls, arising on corolla; filaments often shorter than anthers; anthers with longitudinal slits; staminodes sometimes present
• Ovary superior, 5-many locules, with 1 ascending ovule per locule; placentation basal or axile-basal; style simple, conical or cylindric; stigma usually indistinct, acute to capitellate
• Fruit a 1-many-locular berry
• Seeds often solitary and large with hard, usually shiny testa

Nomenclature:

• Sapotaceae
  • Jussieu: 151 (1789)
  • Meeuse: 31 (1963)
  • Hemsley: 472 (1966)
  • Kupicha: 210 (1983)
  • Pennington: 117 (1991)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 50-100, difficult to define, species ± 1000, pantropical, mostly in humid forest, but some genera (e.g. Sideroxylon) extending into semi-arid and arid regions
• Southern Africa: Genera 7, species 14

References:

• HEMSLEY, J.H. 1966. Notes on African Sapotaceae. Kew Bulletin 20
• JUSSIEU, A.L. DE. 1789. Genera plantarum. Herissant & Barrois, Paris
• KUPICHA, F.K. 1983. Sapotaceae. Flora zambesiaca 7,1
• MEEUSE, A.D.J. 1963. Sapotaceae. Flora of southern Africa 26
• PENNINGTON, T.D. 1991. The genera of Sapotaceae. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew & The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx

Resources:

• Key to Sapotaceae genera

• Sapotaceae genera: