XXV. MALPIGIACEÆ.
Trees, shrubs or vines with opposite simple entire often stipulate persistent leaves; stipules deciduous or 0. Flowers usually perfect or dimorphous, on pedicels articulate near their base from the axils of a bract and furnished below the articulation with two bractlets, in terminal racemes, corymbs or umbels; calyx 5-lobed, the lobes generally imbricated in the bud, usually glandular; petals 5, convolute in the bud, unguiculate; disk inconspicuous; stamens usually 10; filaments generally united at base; anthers short, 2-celled, introrse; ovary of 3 rarely of 2 carpels more or less united into a 3-celled ovary; styles usually 3, distinct, rarely united; stigma terminal or sublateral, inconspicuous; ovule solitary, between orthotropous and anatropous, often uncinate, ascending on the pendulous funicle; raphe ventral; micropyle superior. Fruit drupaceous or samaroid; seeds without albumen, suspended from below the apex of the cell; testa thin; embryo curved or coiled, rarely straight; cotyledons often unequal; radicle short, superior.
This family of nearly sixty genera is confined to tropical and subtropical America, with one arborescent species in the United States.