Trees or shrubs, deciduous, sometimes spiny. Leaves alternate, simple, estipulate, bases often oblique. Flowers bisexual, actinomorphic, often bracteate, in axillary cymes. Calyx lobes 4-10, toothlike or obsolete. Petals as many as calyx lobes, valvate, linear to lorate, sometimes basally coherent. Stamens as many as petals or 2-4 × as many, distinct, arising from an enlarged disk; anthers 2-celled, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary inferior, commonly 1- or rarely 2-loculed; ovule solitary, pendulous; style and stigma simple, or 2- or 3-lobed. Fruit a drupe, crowned with persistent calyx and disk. Seeds 1 or 2, with straight embryo and copious endosperm.

Alangiaceae are treated here as separate from the Cornaceae, into which they have sometimes been placed. See the discussion under Cornaceae in Fl. China (14: 206. 2005).

Fang Wen-pei, Soong Tze-pu & Su He-yi. 1983. Alangiaceae. In: Fang Wen-pei & Chang Che-yung, eds., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 52(2): 160-179.

One genus and ca. 21 species: tropical and subtropical regions from Africa east to Australia and Fiji; 11 species (four endemic) in China.

(Authors: Qin Haining (覃海宁); Chamlong Phengklai)