水冬瓜屬

Small trees or shrubs; branches usually brown with whitish tubercular dots, at first as well as the leaves more or less strigose or scaly. Leaves approximate at the ends of the blanches, usually serrate, with parallel veins diverging from the midrib. Inflorescence lateral, often from the axils of fallen leaves, cymose, subpaniculate, rarely few-flowered; bracts usually small, flowers usually hermaphroditic; sepals 5, imbricate; petals 5, usually connate at the base; stamens many, the anthers dehiscing by pores; ovary 3-5-celled; styles as many, distinct or connate; ovules many.Fruit baccate, rarely dry and subdehiscent.

About 250 species, tropical Asia and America; one in Taiwan.

Lower Taxon

• Saurauia tristyla DC. var. oldhamii Finet & Gagncp.