Trees with cordate, usually entire leaves. Inflorescence axillary or subterminal raceme. Flowers unisexual and bisexual (Plants polygamous). Sepals 5, basally connate, fleshy. Petals absent. Stamens in male flowers united into an elongated column with a globose head or cap on the top, bearing sessile anthers in 5 clusters, each cluster with 5 anthers, shorter than sepals; pistillate flowers with 5 bundles of staminodes. Carpels 5, nearly free; ovules many in each locule; stigmas dilated, radiating. Fruit subglobose, woody, long stipitate, opening by one valve. Seeds numerous, each with long or broad knife-shaped wing at the apex.

Species c. 20; distributed chiefly in tropics of the old world.

Lower Taxon

• Pterygota alata (Roxb.) R.Br.

Related Synonym(s):

• Erythropsis roxburghiana Schoott & Endl. = Pterygota alata (Roxb.) R.Br.
• Sterculia alata Roxb. = Pterygota alata (Roxb.) R.Br.