Description:

• Trees or many-stemmed shrubs, dioecious or polygamous, rarely monoecious; bark often peeling or flaking, with resin ducts, secreting an odoriferous resin
• Branchlets often spine-tipped
• Leaves alternate, simple, trifoliolate or imparipinnate; stipules 0
• Flowers unisexual, rarely bisexual, regular, usually small, perigynous to hypogynous; in axillary simple or compound dichasial or paniculate cymes, or singly in clusters; male flowers usually larger than female flowers
• Calyx infundibuliform, campanulate with 4 valvate, persistent lobes
• Petals 4, free or united near base, usually yellow to green
• Disc in perigynous flowers adnate to hypanthium, cylindrical; in hypogynous flowers not adnate to calyx or corolla, intrastaminal, cylindrical, usually with 4 large or with 4 large and 4 small lobes
• Stamens 8(4), obdiplostemonous, 4 antesepalous stamens longer than other 4, arising on outside or on top of disc; anthers introrse, with longitudinal slits; staminodes present in female flowers
• Ovary half-inferior or superior; rudimentary in male flowers; 2-locular; with 2 epitropous ovules per locule, pendulous on axile placenta; style short; stigma capitate, obscurely 2-4-lobed
• Fruit an ovoid to subglobose drupe; in ripe fruit the thin exocarp and fleshy mesocarp splitting into 2 longitudinal valves to expose a crustaceous or bony endocarp (putamen), usually clasped by a red or yellowish pseudo-aril; pseudo-aril either cupular with short lobes or arms, or with 2-4 relatively long arms, or covering ± whole putamen without distinct arms; putamen usually enclosing 1 fertile locule and 1 much smaller abortive locule
• Seeds: embryo straight, cotyledons much folded
• x = 13 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Commiphora Jacq.
  • Jacquin: 66 (1797) name conserved
  • Wild: 67 (1959)
  • Wild: 263 (1963)
  • Merxmüller: 1 (1968)
  • Van der Walt: 53 (1973)
  • Van der Walt: 5 (1986)
• Balsamodendrum Kunth
  • Kunth: 348 (1824)
  • Sonder: 526 (1860)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species nearly 200, mostly in Africa, some in India and Arabian Peninsula
• Southern Africa: Species 31, widespread