Description:

• Trees or shrubs; dioecious, rarely monoecious
• Leaves alternate, petiolate, often large; stipules caducous, rarely persistent
• Inflorescence usually of axillary fascicles of flowers, sometimes flowers produced on older wood, usually pedicelled
• Petals 0
• Male flowers: sepals 4 or 5, deeply concave, imbricate, sometimes hairy; stamens 3-12(-50); filaments free; anthers sometimes large, ovate; disc concave, rarely cup-like, central, inside stamens; ovary 0 or rudimentary in middle of disc
• Female flowers: calyx as in male; disc annular, cup- or saucer-shaped, sometimes thick and fleshy with papillae on inner surface and irregularly lobed on margin; ovary 1-4-locular, sometimes thick-walled and warty, with 2 ovules in each locule, usually hairy; styles short or absent; stigmas thick, flattened, bifid or entire
• Fruit globose, ellipsoid or ovoid, sometimes large, indehiscent; pericarp somewhat fleshy, becoming indurated on drying; endocarp coriaceous, papery or bony
• Seeds solitary by abortion, ecarunculate; albumen fleshy; embryo straight, cotyledons broad, flat
• x = 10 (high polyploidy)

Classification Notes:

• Embryological and rbcL gene sequence data suggest a separate familial placement: Putranjivaceae near Erythroxylaceae and Rhizophoraceae

Nomenclature:

• Drypetes Vahl
  • Vahl: 49 (1807)
  • Hutchinson: 403 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 88 (1987)
  • Webster: 47 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 87 (1996)
  • Tokuoka & Tobe: 189 (1999)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 200, mainly Old World tropics, few in West Indies and South America
• Southern Africa: Species 5, Northern Province, Mpumalanga to KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape