Description:

• Shrubs or small trees, evergreen or deciduous, often aromatic and resinous; roots commonly with nitrogen-fixing nodules; plants monoecious or dioecious
• Leaves alternate, simple, entire, serrate, irregularly toothed or lobed, often gland-dotted, usually leathery, petiolate; stipules 0
• Inflorescences axillary, ± erect, catkin-like spikes, usually surrounded by 2-6 bracteoles; male spikes often dense, sometimes spikes with male flowers below and female flowers above; female spikes longer or shorter than male
• Flowers inconspicuous, unisexual, occasionally bisexual, wind-pollinated
• Perianth 0
• Male flowers subtended by solitary bracts; stamens 2-8(-20), often 4-6; filaments short, free or ± cohering; anthers dorsifixed, 2-thecous, erect, ovate, extrorsely dehiscing by longitudinal slits; ovary rudimentary
• Female flowers subtended by solitary bracts; bracteoles present or 0; gynoecium 2-carpellate; ovary superior, sessile, 1-locular; ovule solitary, basal, erect; style short; stigmas 2, filiform or occasionally short
• Fruit a drupe, globose or ovoid, usually warty, often covered with white wax, sometimes with gladular dots, enclosed by persistent bracts and bracteoles; endocarp hard
• Seed with little or no endosperm; embryo straight
• x = 8 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Morella Lour.
  • Loureiro: 548 (1790)
  • Wilbur: 93 (1994)
  • Killick et al.: 993 (1998)
• Myrica L.
  • Linneaus: 1024 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 449 (1754) in strict sense
  • Jussieu: 409 (1789) in part
  • Blume: 3 (1829) in part
  • Bentham: 400 (1880) in part
  • Engler: 27 (1888) in part
  • Chevalier: 85 (1901) in part
  • Hutchinson: 307 (1917) in part
  • Hutchinson: 561 (1925) in part
  • Adamson: 311 (1950) in part
  • Killick: 5 (1969) in part
  • Polhill: 261 (1989) in part
  • Kubitzki: 456 (1993) in part
  • White: 175 (1993) in part

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 53, temperate and subtropical parts of both hemispheres
• Southern Africa: Species 9, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho, but mainly in the Western and Eastern Cape