Description:

• Perennial herbs or shrubs; monoecious, rarely dioecious
• Leaves alternate, petiolate or subsessile, from simple to digitately lobed, rarely pinnately lobed; stipules various
• Inflorescence a terminal, dichotomous cyme with lateral male flowers and terminal, solitary, female flowers
• Male flowers: sepals usually 5, imbricate, often shortly connate at base, often with stalked glands on margin; petals 5, free or shortly connate at base, rarely obsolete; disc of 5 free glands, sometimes annular; stamens 6-10, rarely more, in 2 series; filaments connate at base; pistil 0
• Female flowers: sepals, petals and disc as in male flowers; ovary glabrous or hairy, (1)2 or 3(-5)-locular, with a single ovule in each locule; styles free or connate at base, often bifid; stigmas laminated
• Fruit a schizocarpic capsule, ovoid or subglobose, breaking septicidally or loculicidally into 3 bivalved cocci, rarely subdrupaceous and ± indehiscent; endocarp crustaceous or indurated
• Seeds ovoid or oblong, carunculate, caruncle often much divided; testa crustaceous; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat
• x = 11

Nomenclature:

• Jatropha L.
  • Linnaeus: 1006 (1753)
  • Prain: 418 (1920)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 343 (1987
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 141 (1991)
  • Webster: 103 (1994)
  • Radcliffe-Smith: 253 (1996)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 156, cosmopolitan in tropics and subtropics
• Southern Africa: Species ± 19, widespread