Description:

• Herbs or shrubs; monoecious or dioecious
• Leaves alternate, often large and serrate; stipulate
• Inflorescence a raceme or spike with male flowers glomerulate and distant, with an occasional pedicellate female flower
• Petals 0
• Male flowers: calyx splitting into 3 or 4 valvate lobes; disc 0; stamens 3-30, usually intermixed with small glands and sometimes surrounded by a ring of similar, free or connate glands; filaments free; pistil 0
• Female flowers: calyx 2-4-partite; lobes imbricate; disc glands 2-6, resembling staminodes, alternating with carpels, rarely saucer-shaped; ovary (2)3(4)-locular, with a solitary ovule in each locule; styles 3(4), free or connate near base, plumose-laciniate
• Fruit a capsule breaking up into (2)3(4) bivalved cocci or by abortion 1 coccus, separating septifragally from a crustaceous or woody columella; pericarp thin; endocarp crustaceous
• Seeds subglobose, enclosed by thin aril; testa crustaceous, foveolate-reticulate, sometimes muricate or smooth; albumen fleshy; cotyledons suborbicular, sometimes scarcely larger than radicle
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Micrococca Benth.
  • Bentham: 503 (1849)
  • Prain: 460 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 47 (1987)
  • Webster: 88 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 176 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 12, mostly tropical Africa, also Madagascar to Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 2 in eastern parts