Description:

• Mostly evergreen trees or shrubs, often tall with buttresses, or twining parasitic herbs (Cassytha); bark and foliage usually aromatic; plants sometimes dioecious
• Leaves simple, alternate, rarely opposite or subopposite, entire or slightly undulate, usually coriaceous, penninerved or digitately 3-5-nerved, with a very fine reticulum of tertiary veins, scale-like in Cassytha; stipules 0
• Inflorescences cymose, racemose, capitate or false umbels; rarely flowers solitary, axillary or subterminal, rarely terminal; bracts small or 0, caducous or subpersistent and sometimes forming an involucre below the partial inflorescence; bracteoles present in Cassytha
• Flowers bisexual or unisexual, or sometimes bisexual and unisexual mixed, regular, generally 3-merous, usually many, small and inconspicuous, mostly green or yellow
• Perianth generally 3-merous; tube ovoid, turbinate or campanulate, sometimes enlarged and persistent in fruit
• Tepals usually ± equal, free, in 2 whorls of (2)3, imbricate or in 1 whorl; sometimes 0
• Stamens and staminodes together usually twice as many as tepals, in 3 or 4 whorls, 1 or 2 outer whorls usually adnate to perianth, and innermost row often of staminodes adnate to receptacle; filaments variable, often with gland at base; anthers basifixed, with 2-4 thecae opening by valves, those of outer stamens introrse, those of third series often extrorse, sometimes with operculum remaining attached to anthers; staminodes tepaloid, sagittate or ligulate
• Ovary superior, rarely inferior, unicarpellate, sessile, ± surrounded or enclosed by receptacle, 1-locular; ovule solitary, pendulous, anatropous; style terminal, simple; stigma small, discoid, rarely 2- or 3-lobed
• Fruit a 1-seeded berry, drupe or sometimes dry, indehiscent, free or ± surrounded by accrescent receptacle, or completely enclosed within it, often borne on a thickened fruiting pedicel
• Seed with membraneous to coriaceous testa, sometimes adnate to pericarp and indistinct; endosperm lacking; embryo straight; cotyledons large, fleshy

Nomenclature:

• Lauraceae
  • Jussieu: 80 (1789), as Lauri
  • Meisner: 1 (1864)
  • Bentham: 146 (1880)
  • Pax: 106 (1889)
  • Kostermans: 73 (1938)
  • Kostermans: 193 (1957)
  • Rohwer: 366 (1993)
  • Verdcourt: 1 (1996)
  • Diniz: 45 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 52; species over 2 000, mainly in tropics and subtropics of both hemispheres
• Southern Africa: Genera 5 (1 exotic), species ± 11 (1 exotic)

References:

• BENTHAM, G. 1880. Laurineae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3,1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• DINIZ, M.A. 1997. Lauraceae. Flora zambesiaca 9,2
• JUSSIEU, A.L. DE. 1789. Lauri, les Lauriers. Genera plantarum secundum ordines naturales disposita. Herissant & Barrois, Paris
• KOSTERMANS, A.J.G.H. 1938. The African Lauraceae 1. (Revision of the Lauraceae IV). Bulletin du Jardin Botanique de l'État Bruxelles 15
• KOSTERMANS, A.J.G.H. 1957. Lauraceae. Reinwardtia 4,2
• MEISNER, C.F. 1864. Lauraceae. In A. de Candolle, Prodromus 15. Masson & Sons, Paris
• PAX, F. 1889. Lauraceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien III, 2
• ROHWER, J.G. 1993. Lauraceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• VERDCOURT, B. 1996. Flora of tropical East Africa. Lauraceae

Resources:

• Key to Lauraceae genera

• Lauraceae genera: