PLANT: Trees, shrubs, or herbs.

LEAVES: alternate, simple, the margins entire; stipules wanting or vestigial.

INFLORESCENCE: in ours racemes.

FLOWERS: mostly perfect, actinomorphic; sepals usually 4 or 5, distinct or fused below; petals absent; stamens 4-many, often in 2 alternating cycles and twice as many as the sepals; pistil superior, 1-many carpellate, the carpels distinct or united, unilocular, the placentae basal; styles and stigmas as many as the carpels.

FRUITS: berries or druplets in ours.

NOTES: Ca. 18 genera, ca. 125 spp.; cosmopolitan but mainly tropical or subtropical regions, especially diverse in the New World. Nowicke, J. W. 1968. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 55:294-364; Walter, H. 1909. in Das Pflanzenreich IV. 83 [Heft 39]: 1-154.

REFERENCES: Steinmann, Victor. 2001. Phytolaccaceae. J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. Volume 33(1).