Trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate or subopposite, palmately 3 - 5-nerved at base or
penninerved, with sessile glands in between veins at base and stipels at top of petioles; stipules
subulate, caducous or semipersistent. Inflorescences simple or panicled spikes or racemes.
Male flowers: small, clustered; calyx globose and closed in bud; petals and disc absent; stamens
(3 -) 6 - 8; filaments shortly coherent at base. Female flowers: solitary to a bract, on glandular
thickening on the rachis; sepals (3 -) 4 (- 8), imbricate in bud, sometimes glandular, persistent;
petals, disc and staminodes absent; ovary 3-loculed; ovule 1 in each locule; styles 3, free,
simple or lobed, recurved, often elongate. Fruits 3-lobed, 3-valved, 3-seeded; seeds subglobose;
testa crustaceous; endosperm fleshy; cotyledons flat.
Tropics of both and Old and New World, ca 62 species; 3 species in India.
KEY TO THE SPECIES
1 a. Plants glabrescent; leaves cuneate-obovate or subpanduriform to elliptic, penninerved,
estipellate; petioles 2 - 7 mm long; male inflorescences terminal, compound; fruits subglobose,
deeply 3-lobed, smooth, 8 – 10 mm in diam.
b. Plants pubescent; leaves ovate to orbicular, trinerved at base, stipellate at base; petioles longer,
5 - 60 mm long; male inflorescences axillary or sometimes cauliflorous, simple; fruits globose
or ellipsoid, shallowly 3-lobed, smooth or strongly muricate, 12 – 16 mm in diam.
2
2 a. Leaves softly pubescent beneath; stipels 4 - 6 mm long; fruits globose, smooth, pubescent
