Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, shrubs, or small trees, often stellately hairy
• Leaves alternate, often in 2 ranks, simple or rarely digitate, entire, toothed, or lobed, often palmately veined, petiolate; stipules paired, usually small and deciduous
• Inflorescence usually cymose, with cymes often leaf-opposed, sometimes in corymbs or panicles, mostly axillary, sometimes terminal
• Flowers usually bisexual, regular
• Sepals (3 or 4)5, free or occasionally connate, usually valvate
• Petals free, as many as sepals and alternating with them, rarely 0, often with a glandular claw or appendage at base
• Stamens mostly indefinite, 7 or many; often on a raised torus or androgynophore, free or connate at base, all fertile or outer sterile; anthers dehiscing longitudinally or by terminal pores
• Ovary superior, 2-10-locular, with 2-many ovules per locule on axile placentas; style 1; stigma entire or lobed at apex or stigmas almost free
• Fruit a dry or somewhat fleshy drupe or a capsule, 2-10-locular or unilocular by abortion, sometimes transversely septate between seeds
• Seeds with endosperm

Classification Notes:

• Malvaceae - Grewioideae, fide Bayer et al. (1999)
• See note on family circumscription under Malvaceae

Nomenclature:

• Tiliaceae
  • Candolle: 503 (1824)
  • Harvey: 223 (1860)
  • Roessler: 1 (1969)
  • Wild: 1 (1984)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 48, species 725, ± cosmopolitan but especially abundant in the tropical and subtropical regions
• Southern Africa: Genera 4, species 60

References:

• BAYER, C., FAY, M.F., DE BRUIJN, A.Y., SAVOLAINEN, V., MORTON, C.M., KUBITZKI, K., ALVERSON, W.S., CHASE, M.W. 1999. Support for an expanded family concept of Malvaceae within a recircumscribed order MALVALES: a combined analysis of plastid atpB and rbcL DNA sequences. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society 129
• CANDOLLE, A.P. DE. 1824. Tiliaceae. Prodromus. Treuttel & Würtz, Paris
• HARVEY, W.H. 1860. Tiliaceae, Juss. Flora capensis 1
• ROESSLER, H. 1969. Tiliaceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 81
• WILD, H. 1984. Tiliaceae. Flora of southern Africa 21,1

Resources:

• Key to Tiliaceae genera

• Tiliaceae genera: