Antidaphne Poepp. & Endl.

Medium-sized, erect shrubs, without adventitious roots in the shoots. Leaves alternate, thickly coriaceous. Flowers minute, spicate, dioecious; spikes short (up to 10 mm. in length), sessile in the leaf axils, more or less strobiliform; bractlets scale-like, broadly imbricate, either caducous or persistent in anthesis. Staminate flowers reduced to 3-6 stamens inserted at the base of the bractlets on a small disk, the filaments elongated, unequal; anthers erect, 2-4-celled, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen grains globose, with 3 pori, the exine conspicuously aculeate. Pistillate flowers sessile, in groups of 2-5 at the bractlet axils, bearing a perigonium; tepals well or poorly developed, adnate to the ovary; style none, but the stigma capitate. Fruit a round berry, the pericarp fleshy and possessing an evident milky layer.