Synonyms: Cassine APNI*
Description: Shrubs or trees, glabrous.
Leaves opposite, sub-opposite or alternate, entire, crenate, dentate, or spinose.
Inflorescences axillary, cymose. Flowers bisexual or unisexual (dioecious, polygamous, or monoecious), 3–5-merous; disc fleshy, annular, entire, 4–5-angled, or lobed, intrastaminal or stamens on disk; anthers longitudinally dehiscent, introrse or extrorse; ovary 2–4-locular; ovules erect, 2 per locule.
Fruit a spheroid or ellipsoid drupe, fleshy or coriaceous; seeds 1–2, sometimes 3, ellipsoid or ovoid, flattened or triangular.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 40 species. West Indies, Africa, Madagascar, India, Macronesia. Australia: 2 species (endemic) Qld., NSW, N.T., W.A.
Text by Louisa Murray (April 2012). Key added by Kerry Gibbons, adapted from L.W. Jessup, P.S. Green, P.G. Kodela, Flora of Australia Online [accessed 18 May].
Taxon concept: Kubitzki, K. ed. 2004. Flowering Plants. Dicotyledons: Celastrales, Vol vi, p45. Berlin: Springer.
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Flowers 5-merous; fruit ellipsoidal to obovoid; exocarp almost black; Norfolk and Lord Howe Islands | Elaeodendron curtipendulum |
| Flowers 4-merous; fruit ovoid or broadly ellipsoidal; exocarp orange-red; Australian mainland | Elaeodendron australe |
|
