Description:

• Trees, shrubs, or shrublets, rarely herbs, usually aromatic, sometimes monoecious or dioecious
• Leaves alternate or opposite, simple, digitately 1-5-foliolate, or pinnate, gland-dotted; stipules 0
• Flowers bisexual or unisexual, regular, in terminal or axillary umbels, heads, spikes, racemes, panicles, or occasionally solitary
• Sepals (2-)5, free or sometimes ± connate
• Petals 4 or 5, free, rarely 0 (Empleurum), hypogynous or perigynous, imbricate or rarely valvate
• Stamens equalling number of petals or twice as many, rarely fewer or many, free or occasionally connate at base or adnate to petals, arising at base or rarely on margin of disc; anthers 2-thecous, usually with apical gland; staminodes present or 0
• Disc between ovary and stamens, rarely absent
• Gynoecium of 1-5, but most commonly 5 ± united carpels, each with (1)2(several) axile ovules; style simple; stigma variously capitate, discoid or ± deeply lobed
• Fruit variable, mostly schizocarps, drupes or berries
• Seeds often black, sometimes with arillus; embryo large, straight or bent; endosperm present and fleshy or absent

Nomenclature:

• Rutaceae
  • Sonder: 371 (1860)
  • Mendonça: 181 (1963)
  • Schreiber: 3 (1973)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera ± 160, species ± 1650, cosmopolitan in warm and temperate regions, mostly Africa and Australia
• Southern Africa: Genera 20 (22), species 290
  • 1 species: *Ruta graveolens L. (4012000) is an occasional garden escape

References:

• MENDONÇA, F.A. 1963. 40. Rutaceae. Flora zambesiaca 2,1
• SCHREIBER, A. 1973. Rutaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 68
• SONDER, W. 1860. Rutaceae, DC. Flora capensis 1

Resources:

• Key to Rutaceae genera

• Rutaceae genera: