Commiphora Jacq.

Small or medium-sized trees or shrubs, usually imperfectly dioecious, rarely monoecious. Outer bark of trunk and large branches usually translucent and peeling away from the green under-bark.. Exudate a gummy resin or liquid and volatile, often aromatic, the exudate may be copious, scanty or hardly apparent; it is not clear whether this is a genetically based character, more or less constant for each taxon or dependent on edaphic or seasonal factors.. Wood soft, light, sometimes used by pastoralists to make household utensils.. Ultimate branches either long-shoots on which the leaves are spirally arranged or condensed short-shoots bearing leaves in clusters; either long-or short-shoots or both may or may not be spine-tipped; flowers usually produced on short-shoots. Leaves usually soon caducous, usually 3-foliolate or imparipinnate with (in Flora area) strictly opposite leaflets, less often 1-foliolate or simple; long-shoot leaves often with more leaflets than short-shoot leaves. Inflorescences, which are often precocious, maybe elongated panicles or dichasial cymes or reduced to few-flowered clusters or single flowers; ♂ inflorescence often larger and looser than the 9-Flowers pedicellate or sessile, small, regular, greenish yellow or dark red, usually imperfectly unisexual, the ♂ with or without a vestigial, rarely functional, ovary, the ♀ with reduced, occasionally functional, stamens. Receptacle flat (fig. 6/3, p.34), saucer-(fig. 7/5, p.41), cup-(fig. 12/4, p.69) or funnel-shaped (fig. 12/11). Calyx cup-shaped or tubular, with 4 or very rarely 5 valvate lobes. Petals 4 or very rarely 5, free, valvate, or slightly imbricate. Stamens 8 in two whorls of 4 or, in a few species, 4 only, shorter than, or, rarely, as long as the petals. A lobed disc is usually present. Ovary 2-or very rarely, 3-locular, with 2 pendulous ovules in each locule; style short; stigma subcapitate, obscurely 4-lobed. Fruit a drupe, the fleshy or leathery pericarp composed of fused ectocarp and mesocarp splitting when ripe into 2 or, less often, 4 or very rarely 3 valves to disclose the hard stone (putamen) which is usually covered, at least at the base, by a fleshy variously lobed red, orange or yellow pseudaril (which has wrongly been called the mesocarp but is really an outgrowth of the endocarp); this attracts birds thus assisting the dispersal of the stone; the stone usually consists of a fertile 1-seeded locule and a sterile locule; in a few species both locules may sometimes, or perhaps always be fertile; in a few species 3 fertile locules have been recorded as a rare abnormality; the fertile locule may show an oval ‘shield of dehiscence’ extending downwards from the apex which splits open in germination; two apical pits between the locules may or may not be present, these probably assist the absorption of water before germination. Cotyledons (where observed), flat or plicate, entire, ± as broad as long (see fig. 3/3, p.10)