Description:

• Trees, shrubs, or woody climbers, sometimes spinescent, sometimes hemiparasitic
• Leaves usually alternate, petiolate, simple, entire, mostly pinnately veined; stipules 0
• Inflorescences axillary, short racemes and panicles or elongated spikes, often fascicles or glomerules, rarely reduced to a solitary flower
• Flowers bisexual, regular, hypogynous, cyclic, rarely heterostylous, small
• Calyx cup-shaped with margin ± entire or 3-5(6)-lobed, small, with base free or usually partially connate and ± adnate to ovary
• Petals 3-5(6), free or variously connate, valvate in bud, much larger than calyx
• Stamens 3-8(10), opposite petals, if equal in number to them, free or adnate to them at base, sometimes with up to 12 staminodes, hypogynous; anthers 2-thecous, longitudinally dehiscent by means of a slit or more rarely an apical pore, basi- or medifixed
• Disc various, often annular
• Ovary superior, usually 1-locular near top but 1-3(-5)-locular at base; ovules 1-4 per locule, anatropous, pendulous from apex of a free central placenta, or from inner angle of 2-more-locular ovaries; style usually short, simple or conical, columnar or filiform; stigma 2-5-lobed, subsessile
• Fruit a drupe with a thin and often fleshy, sometimes dehiscent or caducous exocarp, and a crustaceous to woody endocarp, or concrescent with the cup-shaped floral axis, or with an accrescent calyx or disc which then forms an external fleshy layer
• Seed 1; testa thin; endosperm copious, starchy and/or oily, bearing the very small embryo at its apex

Nomenclature:

• Olacaceae
  • Mirbel: 377 (1813)
  • Candolle: 531 (1824)
  • Bentham: 342 (1862)
  • Engler: 231 (1889)
  • Sleumer: 22 (1935)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 25; species 250, predominantly in the tropics, a few in the subtropics of Old and New World
• Southern Africa: Genera 2, species 3

References:

• BENTHAM, G. 1862. Olacineae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 1. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• CANDOLLE, A.-P. DE. 1824. Olacineae. Prodromus 1. Treuttel & Würtz, Paris
• ENGLER, A. 1889. Olacaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3,1
• MIRBEL, C.F.B. DE. 1813. Olacineae. Bulletin de la Société Philomatique de Paris
• SLEUMER, H. 1935. Olacaceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien, edn 2,16b

Resources:

• Key to Olacaceae genera

• Olacaceae genera: