Description: Small trees or shrubs, rarely herbs, branchlets with prominent lenticels.
Leaves opposite, pinnate, sometimes glandular, petioles usually joined by a ridge, stipules absent.
Inflorescences cymose with primary branches umbellate, terminal and corymb-like, longer than the leaves. Flowers actinomorphic, bisexual, 3–5-merous. Calyx 3–5-toothed. Corolla tube short, lobes 3–5, spreading. Stamens as many as corolla lobes; sessile, inserted in corolla tube; anthers 2-locular, dehiscence by longitudinal slits, extrorse. Ovary inferior, 3–5-locular; ovule solitary in each loculus; style slender, terminal.
Fruit a drupe, succulent with 3–5 pyrenes.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 22 species, subtropical and tropical montaine. Australia: 3 species (2 species endemic, 1 species naturalized), Qld, N.S.W., A.C.T., Vic., Tas., S.A.
See revision by R. Bolli (1994) Dissertationes Botanicae v. 223.
Text by G. J. Harden (1992); edited KL Wilson (Dec 2007). Distribution and occurence updated by Kerry Gibbons, 21 Apr. 2023.
Taxon concept: Distribution and occurrence: Kew Plants of the World Online; Australian Plant Census [both accessed 18 Apr. 2023].
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Leaves with basal pair of leaflets very close to stem, stipule-like; flowers mostly 4-merous; fruit white | Sambucus gaudichaudiana |
| Leaves with basal pair of leaflets more than 10 mm from stem, not stipule-like; flowers usually 3- or 5-merous; fruit yellow or black | 2 |
| 2 | Fruit yellow; flowers usually 3-merous | Sambucus australasica |
| Fruit black; flowers usually 5-merous
Back to 1 | Sambucus nigra |
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