XL. STERCULIACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with bitter astringent juice, mucilaginous bark, and alternate simple leaves, with stipules. Flowers perfect, regular; calyx of 5 sepals, imbricated in the bud; corolla 0 (in Fremontia); anthers extrorse; pistil of 5 united carpels; ovary 5-celled; styles united; ovules anatropous.
A family of about fifty genera mostly confined to the tropics. Its most important species, Theobroma Cacao L., of the West Indies, produces chocolate from the cotyledons. Firmiana simplex F. N. Meyer, of this family and a native of southern China, is often planted as an ornamental tree in the southern states, where it has sometimes become naturalized, and in California.