Description:

• Trees or shrubs
• Leaves alternate, petiolate, entire, serrate or with subspinose teeth; stipules small
• Inflorescence an umbel or flowers fascicled or rarely solitary
• Flowers bisexual
• Calyx tube short or subelongated or 0; sepals 4-6, suborbicular, concave, imbricate
• Petals 0
• Stamens 6-15, rarely 20-40, free or connate, hypogynous or arising from calyx tube or at base of calyx; filaments linear, connective of anthers sometimes penicillate at apex; staminodes alternating with stamens, sometimes oblong and hairy at apex
• Ovary superior, 1-locular with few to many ovules on 3 or 4 parietal placentas; style short; stigma capitate or peltate or stigmas 3
• Fruit a subfleshy or dry capsule, opening by 3 or 4 valves, few- to many-seeded
• Seeds sometimes angled, with a fleshy aril; testa chartaceous; embryo straight; cotyledons flat, elliptic or suborbicular; endosperm present
• x = 7 (11) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Casearia Jacq.
  • Jacquin: 4, 21 (1760)
  • Wild: 293 (1960)
  • Killick: 91 (1976)
  • Sleumer: 280 (1980)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 160, cosmopolitan in tropics
• Southern Africa: Species 1: Casearia gladiiformis Mast., KwaZulu-Natal, Eastern Cape near East London; in forest, chiefly along the coast