Description:

• Trees, dioecious; rather rigid, even branchlets, decussately branched; branchlets adpressed silky-pilose, angled, articulated
• Leaves decussate, petiolate, ovate to suborbicular, usually subcordate, densely silky on undersurface; stipules large, connate, sheathing, deciduous
• Flowers axillary; male inflorescence a shortly pedunculate triad of cernuous, catkin-like spikes or racemes; female flowers solitary
• Petals 0
• Disc 0
• Male flowers: calyx of 2-5 bract-like, spirally arranged, ciliate sepals; stamens many, spirally arranged on prolonged axis, with lowest filaments short and recurved, upper subsessile; anthers with thecae slightly divided and with few, long hairs at apex; pistil absent
• Female flowers: calyx 5-partite, with ovate-acuminate, imbricate segments; ovary 3- or 4-locular, with 2 ovules in each locule; densely tomentose; styles connate into a pilose column; stigmas 3, spreading, large, linear-lanceolate
• Fruit breaking up into 3 or 4 bivalved cocci, depressed-globose, often with dense indumentum
• Seeds elliptic-globose; testa hard and shiny; embryo straight with two collateral rounded cotyledons, chlorophyllous; endosperm abundant, oily

Nomenclature:

• Androstachys Prain
  • Prain: 438 (1908)
  • Hutchinson: 377 (1915)
  • Airy Shaw: 251 (1965) Androstachydaceae Airy Shaw
  • Airy Shaw: 519 (1970)
  • Leroy: 147 (1976)
  • Alvin: 579 (1987)
  • Dahlgren & Van Wyk: 3 (1988) Androstachydaceae
  • Webster: 61 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 120 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 1: Androstachys johnsonii Prain, Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Northern Province, Mpumalanga and Swaziland