Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, glabrous, with milky latex; monoecious or dioecious
• Leaves alternate, long-petiolate, often peltate, with pair of glands at apex of petiole; stipules caducous
• Inflorescences terminal or subterminal, pseudoracemose, solitary, usually bisexual, predominantly male with 1 or more female flowers at base; male bracts broad, with a pair of sessile glands at base
• Petals 0
• Disc 0
• Male flowers pedicellate; sepals 1 or 2, if 2 then imbricate and vertically disposed; stamens 5-50, free, filaments short; pistillode 0
• Female flowers long-pedicellate; sepals 2 or 3, open; ovary 2(3)-locular, with 1 ovule per locule; styles 2(3), connate at base, undivided or bilobate, straight, the adaxial stigmatic surface running length of arms, canaliculate and minutely papillose, abaxial surface glandular
• Fruit 2(3)-lobed, subindehiscent or tardily loculicidally dehiscent; endocarp thinly crustaceous; columella small, subpersistent
• Seeds ovoid-ellipsoid; endotesta crustaceous; caruncle fleshy, sometimes half-enclosing seed; cotyledons broad, flat
• x = 8, 9, 11 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Homalanthus A.Juss.
  • Jussieu: 50, t.60 (1824) as Omalanthus
  • Pillans: 558 (1950)
  • Webster: 120 (1994)
  • Esser: 555 (1996) proposal to conserve the spelling of name

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 35, Indo-Pacific region
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Homalanthus populifolius Graham, cultivated and found as an escape in parts of the Cape Peninsula (Western Cape)