Kirkia Oliv.

Trees or shrubs; branchlets marked clearly with scars of old leaves, often sticky around the tips. Leaves spirally arranged, mostly crowded at the ends of shoots, imparipinnate. Flowers in axillary thyrses, apparently unisexual or bisexual. Sepals 4, very shortly united at the base, deltoid, acute, erect. Petals 4, valvate or imbricate. Stamens 4, alternate with petals, inserted outside and beneath the disc, in staminate flowers usually ± as long as petals, in pistillate flowers much reduced; filaments filiform and often broadening slightly towards the base; anthers dorsifixed. Disc annular, usually fleshy. Gynoecium of 4–8 united carpels, much reduced in staminate flowers; ovary narrowly ampulliform; ovules 1 per locule; styles 4–8 slender, coherent; stigmas coherent, capitate. Fruit woody, composed of triquetrous mericarps suspended from the top of a central carpophore, each mericarp with the remaining base of one of the previously coherent styles reflexed back over its apex. Seed slender, broader and rounded at one end, tapering to a point at the other, slightly curved, triangular in cross section.