Description:

• Trees, often with very thick swollen trunks, sometimes shrubs with tuberous rootstocks (often smelling and tasting of horseradish); wood often brittle; bark pale grey to whitish, smooth, sometimes resinous or gummy
• Leaves alternate, usually bi-imparipinnate, petiolate, deciduous or rachis sometimes persistent; pinnae and pinnules mainly opposite or sometimes subopposite, entire; stipules usually minute, caducous, stipitate glands at base of petioles and pinnae
• Inflorescences paniculate, many-flowered, axillary
• Flowers bisexual, regular to somewhat irregular, usually showy, perigynous with sepals, petals and stamens fused at base into a cup-like hypanthium
• Sepals 5, free above hypanthium, petaloid, equal or unequal in size, imbricate in bud, fifth posticous
• Petals 5, free, alternating with sepals, equal or unequal in size, imbricate, white
• Stamens 5, inserted on margin of disc or epipetalous, declinate, alternating with 3-5 staminodes; filaments free or partly united; anthers 1-thecous, dorsifixed, dehiscing lengthwise by a slit, sometimes cohering
• Ovary superior, consisting of 3 fused carpels, 1-locular, stipitate, cylindrical; ovules many in 2 series on 3 parietal placentas, pendulous, anatropous, bitegmic; style terete, slender, hollow, truncate at apex and without stigmatic lobes
• Fruit an elongated, beaked, 1-locular, many-seeded, pod-like capsule opening by 3 valves, 3-6-angled, sometimes torulose
• Seeds large, with 3 membranous wings; endosperm 0; embryo straight and oily
• x = 7 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Moringaceae
  • Brown: 238 (1826), as Moringeae
  • Hooker: 429 (1862)
  • Pax: 693 (1936)
  • Leistner: 184 (1970)
  • Verdcourt: 1 (1985)
  • Verdcourt: 1 (1986)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genus 1, species ± 14, Africa and Madagascar to N India
• Southern Africa: Genus 1, species 1

References:

• BROWN, R. 1826. Moringeae. Narrative of travels and discoveries in the northern and central Africa. John Murray, London
• HOOKER, J.D. 1862. Moringeae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• PAX, F. 1936. Moringaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2,17b
• Leistner: 184 (1970);
• VERDCOURT, B. 1985. A synopsis of the Moringaceae. Kew Bulletin 40
• VERDCOURT, B. 1986. Flora of tropical East Africa. Moringaceae

Resources:

• Moringaceae genus: Moringa