PLANT: Shrubs and small trees, dioecious, monoecious, polygamodioecious or with only perfect flowers, the young growth usually viscous.

LEAVES: usually alternate, simple or pinnately compound, sessile or petiolate, exstipulate, usually viscous, with resinous glands, glabrous to pubescent, the midvein usually prominent.

INFLORESCENCE: a corymb or a solitary to compund panicle, axillary and/or terminal, with small leafy bracts.

FLOWERS: pedicellate, actinomorphic; sepals 3-6 (-7), deciduous or persistent in fruit; petals 0; stamens 6-12 (-16) in staminate flowers, absent or only rudimentary in pistillate flowers; nectar-disc stipe-like in perfect and pistillate flowers, rudimentary or absent in staminate flowers; ovary borne on a short gynophore, rudimentary in staminate flowers, usually viscous; style 1, filiform; stigmas (2-)3(-4); ovary (2-)3(-6) loculed, the placentation axile.

FRUIT: a 2-6 -angled or -winged capsule, chartaceous, coriaceous or membranous.

SEEDS: 2 or 1 (by abortion) per locule. 2 n = 28.

NOTES: 67 spp., primarily an Austrailian genus, 7 extra-Australian in New Guinea, Madagascar, Hawaii, and 1 sp. worldwide in the tropics and subtropics. (For R. Dodoens, Dutch physician and botanist.)

REFERENCES: Salywon, Andrew. 1999. Sapindaceae. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. 32(1).