Ceratonia L.

Unarmed, evergreen trees or shrubs. Leaves paripinnate, with a few pairs of large leaflets (in Australian species); stipules minute or absent; leaflets usually opposite, sometimes subopposite. Inflorescences racemose; racemes short, solitary or fascicled, axillary or borne on old wood; bracts and bracteoles minute, deciduous. Flowers small, usually unisexual, sometimes bisexual, polygamous or dioecious, greenish, with a fleshy hypogynous disc. Calyx tube turbinate; sepals 5, imbricate, deciduous. Petals absent. Stamens 5; filaments filiform; anthers dorsifixed, subversatile, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary shortly stipitate; style very short; stigma peltate. Pod linear-oblong, compressed, pulpy when immature, coriaceous when mature, indehiscent, many-seeded. Seeds transverse.