Description:

• Trees or shrubs, dioecious, with occasional bisexual flowers
• Leaves (1-)3(-5)-foliolate; leaflets often relatively large and discolorous, with entire or serrated margin
• Flowers minute, irregular; in simple, axillary racemes or in lax panicles
• Sepals 4, in opposite pairs, imbricate, the two outer larger
• Petals 0 or 4, glabrous or bearded on inner face
• Disc unilateral, lobed, or of 4 glands, rarely rudimentary
• Stamens 8, rarely less, included or shortly exserted; filaments free, usually hairy
• Ovary 2- or 3-locular; compressed or didymous, with a single, basal ovule in each locule, often hairy; style 2- or 3-lobed, or styles free
• Fruit of 2 fleshy, dry, or leathery, 1-locular carpels, sometimes reduced to 1 carpel
• Seeds erect, usually globose and with a short aril
• x = 7 or 14 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Allophylus L.
  • Linnaeus: 348 (1753)
  • Radlkofer: 201 (1909)
  • De Winter: 407 (1954)
  • Leenhouts: 301 (1967) as monotypic genus
  • Fouilloy & Hallé: 20 (1973)
  • Davies & Verdcourt 75 (1998)
• Schmidelia L.
  • Linnaeus: 274 (1767a)
  • Linnaeus: 67 (1767b) name illegitimate
  • Sonder: 238 (1860)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 200, but with poor segregation in an exceptionally difficult genus. Cosmopolitan, mainly tropical and subtropical
• Southern Africa: Species 8 in eastern parts