Description:

• Trees or shrubs, dioecious, evergreen
• Leaves spirally arranged, subopposite or whorled, rarely opposite, linear to narrowly ovate or scale-like, long-persistent
• Male cones usually consisting of many fertile scales, each bearing 2 pollen sacs, axillary, rarely terminal, sessile to shortly stalked, catkin-like, solitary or in groups of 2-5; pollen grains usually with 2 air-bladders or wings
• Female cones axillary, on thin naked stalks or on short leafy or scaly branches, usually reduced to 1 or 2 fertile, terminal scales and a few sterile, lower scales fused with each other and with cone axis; fused cone axis and scales beneath seeds either remain woody or become swollen and often fleshy at maturity (receptacle)
• Ovule solitary, adnate to face of fertile scale, inverted and enclosed in a false aril (epimatium) arising from face of scale and adnate to single integument
• Seeds ellipsoid to globose; testa and false aril form a coriaceous or externally fleshy and internally ± woody shell; embryo axile; cotyledons 2
• x = 13

Nomenclature:

• Podocarpaceae
  • Stapf: 3 (1933)
  • Leistner: 34 (1966)
  • Page: 332 (1990)
  • Von Breitenbach & Von Breitenbach: 131 (1992)
• Taxaceae
  • Phillips: 50 (1951)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 17, species ± 125, in tropics at high altitudes, subtropics and temperate zones, mainly of southern hemisphere, including Africa, Asia, Australasia and South America
• Southern Africa: Genus 1

References:

• LEISTNER, O.A. 1966. Podocarpaceae. Flora of southern Africa 1
• PAGE, C.N. 1990. Podocarpaceae. In Kubitzki, K., The families and genera of vascular plants 1. Springer-Verlag, Berlin
• PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants, edn 2. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa 25. Government Printer, Pretoria
• STAPF, O. 1933. Podocarpaceae. Flora capensis 5, 2 (Supplement)
• VON BREITENBACH, F. & VON BREITENBACH, J. 1992. Podocarpaceae. Tree atlas of southern Africa section 1. Dendrological Foundation, Pretoria

Resources:

• Podocarpaceae genus: Podocarpus