Description:

• Trees, shrubs or climbers, with milky or sometimes watery latex; monoecious or dioecious
• Leaves alternate (spirally or distichous), rarely some opposite, simple, entire or sometimes dentate, 3-nerved, pinnately or palmately veined; stipules present, often conspicuous
• Flowers unisexual, in dense, globose heads or enclosed in a syconium or 'fig'
• Perianth of 2-6, free, persistent tepals or 2-6-lobed or -toothed, or tubular, or 0, valvate or imbricate
• Male flowers with (1-)4(-6) stamens, with straight or reflexed, free or connate filaments; pistillode present or 0
• Female flowers without rudiments of stamens; ovary 1-locular, superior to inferior; ovule solitary, anatropous or campylotropous, pendulous from apex of locule, rarely basal and erect; styles 2, equal or unequal, subulate or filiform, or style entire or bifid at apex
• Fruit either compound and globose or ellipsoid and formed from the enlarged, fleshy perianth segments and outer coat of ovary, or of achenes, immersed or not in a flattened receptacle, or enclosed in a globose or pear-shaped fleshy syconium or 'fig'
• Seeds either large, without endosperm, or small with endosperm

Nomenclature:

• Moraceae
  • Endlicher: 33 (1847)
  • Lindley: 266 (1847)
  • Bureau: 211 (1873)
  • Bentham: 357 (1880)
  • Engler: 66 (1889)
  • Engler: 1 (1898)
  • Corner: 187 (1962)
  • Berg: 1 (1973)
  • Rohwer: 438 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 50; species ± 1200, cosmopolitan, mainly tropical with ± 625 in Asia and Australia, ± 300 species in the Neotropics, and ± 200 species in the African region
• Southern Africa: Genera 4, species 29 (excluding exotics)

References:

• BENTHAM, G. 1880. Tribus Moreae. In G. Bentham & J.D. Hooker, Genera plantarum 3. Lovell Reeve & Co., London
• BERG, C.C. 1973. Some remarks on the classification and differentiation of Moraceae. Mededelingen van het Botanisch Museum en Herbarium van de Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht 386
• BUREAU, E. 1873. Moraceae. In A. de Candolle, Prodromus 17. Masson & Sons, Paris
• CORNER, E.J.H. 1962. The classification of Moraceae. Gardens' Bulletin Singapore 19
• ENDLICHER, S.L. 1847. Moreae. Genera plantarum supplementum quartum. Beck, Vienna
• ENGLER, A. 1889. Moraceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3,1
• ENGLER, A. 1898. Moraceae (excl. Ficus). Moraceae africanae. Monographieen afrikanischer Pflanzenfamilien und -gattungen. Vol. 1. Engelmann, Leipzig
• LINDLEY, J. 1847. Moraceae. The vegetable kingdom. Brandbury & Evans, London
• ROHWER, J.G. 1993. Moraceae. In K. Kubitzki, J.G. Rohwer & V. Bittrich, The families and genera of vascular plants - dicotyledons 2. Springer-Verlag, Berlin

Resources:

• Key to Moraceae genera

• Moraceae genera: