Description:

• Trees or shrubs, erect or decumbent, dioecious
• Leaves alternate, entire, sessile to subpetiolate, acicular to oval, obovate or spatulate, glabrous to densely sericeous
• Flowers regular to very slightly irregular
• Male flowers in solitary, terminal, globose to cylindric capitula, rarely spikes, each capitulum sessile or pedunculate, with a small involucre of brown, papyraceous bracts at base; perianth cylindric, straight or slightly curved in bud, pubescent or glabrous, limbs linear-elliptic, merging imperceptibly into the linear claws, becoming recurved at anthesis; tube very short; anthers sessile to subsessile, linear, acute; style straight or curved, filiform, glabrous or pubescent proximally; pollen presenter cylindric, clavate or truncate, frequently cleft at apex; hypogynous scales 4, filiform-subulate, rarely 0
• Female flowers in solitary, terminal capitula, each flower subtended by a floral bract which enlarges greatly and becomes woody after anthesis; mature capitulum a woody, conic, ovoid, or globose cone; perianth as in male, but transversely compressed; staminodes linear, sessile or subsessile; style filiform, glabrous, straight or curved, swollen at apex to form a terminal or oblique, often cleft, stigmatic disc; ovary ovoid, pubescent or glabrous; ovule 1; hypogynous scales as in male
• Fruit an ovoid to biconvex achene, or a samara, ventricose, trigonal, or compressed, pubescent or glabrous
• x = 13

Nomenclature:

• Leucadendron R.Br.
  • Brown: 56 (1810)
  • Stapf et al.: 509 (1912)
  • Williams: 1 (1972)
  • Williams: 121 (1981)
  • Van Wyk: 458 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 83, mainly Western Cape, Eastern Cape with outliers in KwaZulu-Natal