Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, sometimes spinose, usually with milky and sometimes watery sap.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, distichous. Blades usually oblong–elliptic to lanceolate. Margins denticulate, serrulate, or entire. Usually short–petiolate. Stipules present.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, cymose, racemose, spicate, or capitate inflorescences, pistillate flowers sometimes solitary. Flowers small, actinomorphic, bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants monoecious or dioecious). Calyx of staminate flowers with (3)4(5) sepals; sepals distinct or shortly connate, valvate; Calyx of pistillate flowers with 4 sepals; sepals decussate, imbricate, distinct or shortly connate, not fleshy in fruit. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens in staminate flowers 4, opposite the sepals; filaments inflexed in bud; anthers reniform, dithecal, dehiscing longitudinally; staminodes absent in pistillate flowers. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), 2-carpellate, 1–2-celled; ovules 1 per cell; pistillode present in staminate flowers.

Fruit: Drupes comparatively large; 5–15 mm in diameter; thinly fleshy; often with a thickened fleshy base; ± dehiscent. Seeds large; subglobose; 4–12 mm long.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: