Description:

• Shrubs or trees, rarely herbs, usually with stellate hairs or orbicular scales; monoecious, rarely dioecious
• Leaves usually alternate, rarely opposite or whorled, usually with 2 glands at apex of petiole
• Inflorescence a spike or raceme, in monoecious plants usually with many male flowers above few female ones, occasionally with sexes mixed
• Male flowers: calyx (4)5(6)-lobed or -segmented; petals usually present, equal or smaller than sepals; disc of free scales or adnate to base of sepals, sometimes indistinct; stamens 5-many, inserted on a usually pilose receptacle, anthers reversed and filaments inflexed in bud, becoming erect in open flower; ovary 0
• Female flowers: calyx usually smaller than in male, somewhat accrescent in fruit; petals, when present, smaller than in male and sometimes reduced to tuft of hairs; disc as in male or annular; ovary (2)3(4)-locular, with a single ovule in each locule; styles usually recurved, 1-3 times dichotomously branched, sometimes multifid
• Fruit a capsule, often globose, usually 3-locular, breaking into bivalved cocci, rarely subindehiscent; endocarp woody or crustaceous
• Seeds smooth or rarely rugulose, triangular-convex in transverse section, carunculate, often with hard testa and abundant fleshy albumen; embryo straight; cotyledons broad and flat
• x = 10 (7, 8, 9, 11) (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Croton L.
  • Linnaeus: 1004 (1753)
  • Prain: 410 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 135 (1987)
  • Webster: 111 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 275 (1996)
• Eremocarpus Benth.
  • Bentham: 53, t. 26 (1844)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species at least 800, pantropical, the majority American
• Southern Africa: Species ± 11, fairly widespread