Subgenus Eudesmia (R. Br.) L.A.S. Johnson & K.D. Hill

= Eudesmia R. Br., Appendix Flinders Voyage 2: 599, t. 3 (1814).

Type species: E. tetragona R. Br., l.c.

Trees or mallees; bark smooth, sometimes with more or less persistent ribbons or ribbony flakes; or partly or wholly persistent and long-fibrous. Oil glands often present in bark. Radiating, unicellular, blunt-ended thin-walled trichomes arising from flat or slightly prominent glands present on juvenile leaves and shoots, except in sections Fibraria and Odontaria. Juvenile leaves opposite for few to many nodes. Adult leaves disjunct or sometimes opposite, glabrous; tertiary and higher-order venation of reticulum often much reduced. Conflorescences lateral, anthotelic or anauxotelic, panicles, thyrsoids or metabotryoids, or more often reduced to, or consisting of leafy shoots bearing, 3- or 7-flowered umbellasters, these rarely plurinodate or of condensed metabotryoid form, sometimes with accessory branching (superposed). Perianth 4-merous (fixed); carpels 3(-4). Calyx of free reduced persistent sepals, or more or less fused with the corolla in section Apicaria and series Ebbanoenses, Jucundae and Royceanae. Corolla calyptriform, but junctions of petals often discernible. Stamens all fertile, often in 4 ± clearly discernible bundles; filaments white, cream, yellow, yellow-green or orange; anthers dorsifixed, versatile, oval, dehiscing by curved divergent or almost parallel slits. Style short (not reaching calypra in bud) and straight, or long (touching calyptra in bud) and bent. Stigma blunt or tapered, lobed, with short unicellular papillae (long and multicellular in E. erythrocorys). Ovules hemitropous, arranged in 2 separated vertical rows or 4 or 6 vertical rows in each loculus. Seed testa derived from inner and outer integument. Cotyledons emarginate, reniform, not folded in embryo. Seed variable in shape, sometimes keeled or narrowly winged; hilum always ventral. Fruit woody, sometimes 4-winged or with 4 sepaline teeth; capsule usually sunken with valves enclosed.