Description:

• Trees, shrubs, shrublets or climbers, rarely subherbaceous; indumentum of unicellular, compartmented (rarely noncompartmented) hairs, multicellular stalked glands and multicellular scales (in which the head consists of a multicellular plate only one cell thick)
• Leaves opposite, verticillate, spiral or alternate, simple and almost always entire (very rarely crenulate); stipules 0
• Flowers bisexual or bisexual and male in same inflorescence or very rarely plants dioecious, usually 4- or 5-merous, rarely slightly irregular, in axillary or extra-axillary, elongated or subcapitate spikes or racemes or in terminal or axillary panicles
• Receptacle (calyx tube or hypanthium) usually in two distinct parts: lower receptacle surrounding and adnate to the inferior ovary, upper receptacle usually produced beyond ovary to form a short or long tube terminating in (sometimes scarcely developed) sepals
• Sepals 4 or 5 (rarely 6 or 8) or almost absent, sometimes accrescent
• Petals 4 or 5 (rarely more) or absent, free, conspicuous or sometimes very small, usually inserted near mouth of upper receptacle
• Stamens usually twice as many as sepals or petals but occasionally the same number, borne inside upper receptacle with biseriate or, more rarely, uniseriate insertion (one whorl very rarely as staminodes), exserted or included; anthers dorsifixed, versatile
• Disc intrastaminal, hairy or glabrous, sometimes inconspicuous or absent
• Style usually free (attached to upper receptacle for part of its length in Quisqualis and a very few species of Combretum)
• Ovary inferior, 1-locular with usually 2 (up to 6) pendulous anatropous ovules of which only 1 usually develops
• Fruit a pseudocarp, very variable in size and shape, fleshy or dry, stipitate or sessile, usually indehiscent, occasionally tardily dehiscent, often variously winged or ridged, 1-seeded
• Seeds: albumen absent; cotyledons 2 (rarely 3 or 4) occasionally with their petioles connate almost to apex

Nomenclature:

• Combretaceae
  • Exell & Roessler: 1 (1966)
  • Exell: 100 (1978)
  • Carr: 13 (1988)
  • Rodman: 45 (1990)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 20, species 500, cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa: Genera 5, species 41

References:

• CARR, J.D. 1988. Combretaceae in southern Africa. Tree Society of southern Africa, Johannesburg
• EXELL, A.W. 1978. Combretaceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• EXELL, A.W. & ROESSLER, H. 1966. Combretaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 99
• RODMAN, S. 1990. The validity of currently recognised sectional limits within Combretum Loefling, subgenus Combretum (Combretaceae) in southern Africa. M.Sc. thesis, Department of Botany in Faculty of Science at the University of Durban-Westville, Durban

Resources:

• Key to Combretaceae genera

• Combretaceae genera: