LAURACEAE  

Evergreen trees or shrubs; plants usually dioecious or polygamous. Leaves alternate, rarely crowded at tips of branchlets, penninerved, rarely subtriplinerved; membranous or coriaceous, glabrous, usually with pits on underside in axils of lowest 1 or 2 pairs of nerves. Inflorescences thyrso-paniculate to (pleio-)botryoid, axillary or subterminal. Flowers bisexual, 3-merous, small. Perianth with or without a tube. Tepals 6 or 8, equal, usually deciduous. Bisexual flowers with stamens in 3 or 4 whorls, outer 3 fertile, inner, if present, reduced to staminodes; filaments very short or lacking, those of innermost whorl with a pair of large, sessile glands at base, longer than anthers to 0; anthers 4-thecous, introrse in 2 outer whorls, +/- extrorse in third whorl; ovary ovoid, ellipsoid or subglobose, usually glabrous; style longer or shorter than ovary; stigma sometimes 2-lobed. Male flowers similar but ovary sterile, stalk-like or lacking. Female flowers as in bisexual flowers but stamens rudimentary, barren. Fruit baccate, ellipsoid or globose, seated on or in an enlarged, cupular receptacle which is either truncate or 6-toothed or 6-lobed from persistent tepals. x= 12 (11).

Tall evergreen trees. Leaves opposite, penninerved, net-veining conspicuous on both surfaces. Inflorescences 3-flowered cymules, arranged on young growth or on short-shoots, with small, caducous bracts. Flowers bisexual, 3-merous, greenish white. Perianth: tube deeply urceolate. Tepals subequal. Male flowers with 9 fertile stamens, the third whorl with glands; filaments much shorter than anthers; anthers 2-thecous, the first and second whorl introrse, the third whorl extrorse; pollen with a well developed, striate exine (apparently unique for the family); staminodes of whorl four conspicuous, ovate-triangular. Ovary sessile, +/- immersed in receptacle, narrowed into slender style and small stigma. Fruit completely enclosed in accrescent perianth tube; tepals persistent. Seed with delicate testa.

Parasitic herbs with extensively twining thread-like, yellowish stems, adhering to their hosts by uniseriate haustoria; some chlorophyll present. Leaves alternate, minute and scale-like. Inflorescences usually spicate or racemose, rarely with an additional order of branching, rarely condensed to a head. Flowers bisexual, 3-merous, bracteolate, sessile or pedicellate, sometimes dimorphic, small. Perianth: tube (receptacle) short, at first shallow, after anthesis becoming deeply urceolate. Tepals in 2 rows of 3, extremely unequal, the outer ones (sepaloid) much smaller, resembling bracts usually subtending flower. Stamens (6-)9, fertile, those of first and second whorls without glands and with introrse 2-thecous anthers or second whorl reduced to staminodes; third whorl with subsessile glands on each side at base of filaments and anthers extrorse; a fourth whorl of subsessile or stipitate staminodes present. Ovary gradually enveloped by perianth tube; style cylindrical; stigma small, capitate, subsessile. Fruit subglobose, tightly enclosed in an accrescent perianth tube, forming a false drupe, often crowned by a persistent tepals. Seed subglobose; testa thin; endocarp woody. x= 12 ( polyploidy).