Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Aromatic, evergreen or deciduous shrubs or small trees, pubescent with unicellular or peltate, glandular, multicellular hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Surfaces often glandular–dotted. Margins serrate, dentate, or sometimes pinnatifid. Pinnately veined. Petiolate. Stipules rarely present.

Flowers: Flowers in catkins, each flower usually subtended by a bract, sometimes several–flowered clusters subtended by a bract; staminate flowers often subtended by a pair of erect bracteoles; pistillate flowers usually subtended by 2 or 4 bracteoles. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious or occasionally monoecious), rarely some of them bisexual (perfect), perianth absent. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Perfect flowers (only Canacomyrica Guillaumin) with 6 Stamens surrounding ovary; staminate flowers with stamens (2–)4(–10), progressively fewer toward apex of inflorescence; filaments sometimes connate at base; anthers extrorse, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, nectary disk present at base of stamens. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), 2-carpellate, 1-celled; ovule 1, basal, erect, orthotropous; styles distinct or connate at base.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; often waxy or nut-like; sometimes enclosed by the persistent; accrescent bracteoles. Seeds with little or no endosperm; embryo straight; with 2 plano-convex cotyledons.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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