Chingithamnus Handel-Mazzetti; Otherodendron Makino; Paracelastrus Miquel.

Small trees or shrubs, evergreen or deciduous, glabrous, rarely pubescent; bark gray-brown; branchlets terete to somewhat quadrangular. Leaves opposite, entire, often revolute, estipulate. Inflorescences axillary, extra-axillary, or terminal, cymose, fascicled, or thyrsoid. Flowers bisexual, rarely unisexual, dioecious, 5-merous (occasionally 4-6-merous); sepals persistent in fruit, slightly enlarged; petals white or yellowish white. Disk shallowly calathiform to annular or absent, intrastaminal; anthers longitudinally dehiscent, introrse, rarely extrorse. Ovary 2- or 3-locular; ovules erect, 2 per locule. Capsule ellipsoid, leathery, not enclosed in or sitting on fleshy perianth parts, 1-locular, laterally split along one side. Seed 1, ovoid, furrowed, coat often slightly fleshy and aril-like.

This genus is divided into three sections: Microtropis sect. Cymosopaniculatae, M. sect. Remotiflorae, and M. sect. Microtropis.

More than 60 species: tropical and subtropical zones of Africa, America, and E and SE Asia; 27 species (20 endemic) in China.

(Authors: Zhang Zhixiang (张志翔); A. Michele Funston)