4444.000 Manihot Mill.

Trees, shrubs or herbs, sometimes with fleshy root tubers; stems and branches with prominent leaf scars; latex white, indumentum absent. Stipules small usually caducous. Leaves alternate, lamina usually palmately lobed, or dissected; apex glandular or stipellate; pedicel long. Inflorescence terminal or pseudo-axillary, mostly racemose-paniculate. Petals absent; sepals 5, imbricate, petaloid, disc intra-staminal, usually 10-lobed. Fruit a capsule, 3-valved; columella often persistent. Seeds carunculate; testa dry, crustaceous; endosperm fleshy; cotyledon broad and flat.

Derivation of name: native Brazilian name

Worldwide: 60 species in tropical America, mostly Brazil.

Zimbabwe: 4 cultivated taxa.