Trees and shrubs, rarely herbs. Leaves alternate, simple, rarely pinnately compound, petiolate; stipules entire or sometimes lacerate, persistent or caducous; leaf blade margin dentate, serrate or rarely entire; veins pinnate. Inflorescences terminal or axillary, cymose or racemose, rarely 1-flowered. Flowers generally bisexual, actinomorphic or more rarely zygomorphic, bracteate; pedicels articulated. Sepals (2-4)5(10-15), free or more rarely united, imbricate or valvate. Petals (3-)5(-8), mostly free, clawed to sessile, contorted or imbricate. Stamens 5-10 or numerous; filaments generally free and persistent, or anthers sessile; anthers basifixed, longitudinally dehiscent or poricidal; staminodes present or not, sometimes persistent, awl-shaped, spatulate, or petaloid, sometimes connected into a tube. Gynoecium (2 or)3-5(-15)-carpellate, gynophore present or rarely absent; ovary superior, entire or deeply lobed, generally long styled; placentation basal, axile or parietal, rarely laminar; ovules 1 or 2 or numerous per locule; stigma entire or sometimes shortly divided at apex. Fruit fleshy or non-fleshy, generally a septicidal capsule, rarely a nut with accrescent sepals or a drupe, or separating into up to 15 blackish drupelets on a colored accrescent receptacle. Seeds endospermic or non-endospermic, winged or not; germination phanerocotylar or cryptocotylar; embryo usually straight, more rarely curved.

Wei Chao-fen. 1984. Ochnaceae. In: Feng Kuo-mei, ed., Fl. Reipubl. Popularis Sin. 49(2): 302-308.

About 27 genera and ca. 500 species: tropical zones, mainly in the Neotropics; three genera and four species (one endemic) in China.

(Authors: Zhang Zhixiang (张志翔); Maria do Carmo E. Amaral)