Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, shrubs, or in Cassytha parasitic vines.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, rarely opposite or whorled. Margins entire or (in Sassafras Nees & Eberm.) lobed. Pinnately-veined or occasionally tripliveined. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in paniculate, racemose, or capitellate inflorescences. Flowers small, usually aromatic, bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants monoecious), actinomorphic. Perianth of (4)6(9) equal or rarely unequal tepals usually arranged in 2(3) whorls of 3, usually white, greenish white, or yellow, rarely reddish. Stamens usually in 4 whorls of 3, the innermost whorl nearly always reduced to staminodia or absent, other whorls may be reduced as well; filaments of Stamens of third whorl often with 2 stalked or sessile glands at base; anthers dithecal or tetrathecal, opening by valves or small pores. Ovary superior or (in Hypodaphnis Stapf) inferior, 1-celled; ovule 1, anatropous; stigma capitate to disciform or lobed, occasionally decurrent on style, sessile or subsessile.

Fruit: Berry-like; usually subtended by persistent tepals and/or a cupule (i.e. enlarged floral tube); which can be shallow or completely envelop the fruit; rarely fruit seated on a naked pedicel. Seeds without endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: