4483.000 Sapium P. Browne

Usually monoecious, glabrous trees, shrubs, subshrubs or rarely perennial herbs, often with a milky latex. Leaves alternate or subopposite, petiolate, stipulate, simple, entire or dentate, penninerved, usually with glands at the base and/or on the margins. Inflorescences usually terminal or leaf-opposed, spicate or racemiform, solitary; male bracts 1–many-flowered, usually 2-glandular at the base; bracteoles minute. Male flowers pedicels jointed or absent; calyx ± open in bud, 2–3(4)-lobed; petals absent; disk absent. Female flowers pedicels usually long; sepals 2–3(4), free or united, imbricate or open; petals absent; ovary (2)3(4)-locular, ornamented or not, with 1 ovule per locule. Fruit (2)3(4)-lobed, dehiscent, exocarp smooth or horned, separating or not from the woody or crustaceous endocarp. Seeds sarcotesta thin or fleshy, endotesta crustaceous, cotyledons broad, flat.

Worldwide: 125 species, pantropical.

Zimbabwe: 1 cultivated taxon.