Description:

• Evergreen shrubs and trees
• Leaves alternate, simple, entire or toothed, gland-dotted; stipules 0
• Flowers bisexual, ± regular, solitary or in axillary clusters among the foliage, small, white, bell-shaped; bracts small or absent
• Calyx 5-partite or 5-lobed
• Corolla gamopetalous, usually 5-lobed; tube short and more or less campanulate, or elongate and infundibuliform or cylindric, limb subregular, oblique, or bilabiate; lobes imbricate, with two upper often exterior, sometimes largely connate
• Stamens 4, rarely as many as corolla lobes, didynamous or subequal, inserted in corolla and alternating with its lobes, included or exserted; filaments filiform or thickened at base, sometimes shorter than anthers; anthers 2-thecous, with thecae at first parallel, later diverging from confluent apex; staminode 1
• Disc hypogynous, small or obsolete
• Ovary superior, 2-locular, or more or less completely 3-10-locular by the intrusion of septa between ovules, 3-8 ovules in each of the two locules, or solitary when ovary 3-10-locular; placentation axile; style simple; stigma terminal
• Fruit a small ± succulent drupe; exocarp rarely dry; endocarp hard
• Seeds in one series around axis; rarely superposed
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Myoporum Banks & Sol. ex G.Forst.
  • Banks & Solander: 44 (1786)
  • Bailey & Bailey: 748 (1977)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 32, mostly Australia
• Southern Africa: Species 2, naturalised along coast of southern Cape region