Leiopyxis Miquel; Paracleisthus Gagnepain.

Trees or shrubs, monoecious or dioecious; indumentum of simple hairs. Leaves alternate, petiolate; stipules persistent or caducous; leaf blade simple, entire, venation pinnate. Flowers in axillary glomerules or spikes, small, sessile or sometimes shortly pedicellate. Male flowers: sepals 4-6, valvate; petals 4-6, small, scalelike; disk cupular or cushionlike; stamens 5; filaments connate up to half their length, topped with rudimentary ovary; anthers usually ovoid, dorsifixed, extrorse, anther bilocular, longitudinally dehiscent. Female flowers: sepals and petals as in male; disk cup-shaped or conical, surrounding basal ovary, sometimes as long as ovary, tearing into lobes during fruit development, rarely absent; ovary 3(or 4)-celled; ovules 2 in each cell; styles 3, bifid at apex. Fruit a capsule, subglobose, (bi- or) trivalvate when mature, sometimes stipitate (carpopodium), epicarp thin, endocarp bony, inside fibrous; columella and sepals persistent. Seeds (1 or)2 in each cell; cotyledons broad, thinly to thickly fleshy; endosperm copious to submembranous. x = 11.

About 141 species: tropical Africa, Asia, and Australia; seven species in China.

(Authors: Li Bingtao (李秉滔 Li Ping-tao); Stefan Dressler)