Melicytus J.R.Forst. & G.Forst.

Erect to prostrate shrubs or trees to 7 m high, glabrous or nearly so, dioecious or hermaphrodite, branches sometimes thorny. Bark lenticellate. Leaves alternate or fascicled on short lateral branches; lamina entire, crenate or serrate, pinnate-veined, hypostomatic or amphistomatic; petiole present; stipules minute, caducous or persistent. Inflorescences axillary or cauliflorous below the leaves, fasciculate with up to 15 flowers, the flowers solitary or fasciculate. Bracteoles 2, unequal, variously located on pedicel. Flowers functionally unisexual or bisexual, actinomorphic; pedicels with a pair of minute bracts. Sepals often unequal, shortly united at base or free. Petals ± equal, often distally reflexed at anthesis, green, creamish to yellow, sometimes with purple margins. Nectary appendage erect, scale-like or sac-like, basally attached to the dorsal surface of each stamen or staminode. Staminal filaments very short; anthers connivent to  connate forming an urceolate tube, or anthers free, ovoid; connectives each produced into a dentate, membranous appendage. Ovary glabrous, rudimentary in male flowers; placentas 2–5, each with several ovules; style (2) 3–6-fid, glabrous, persistent or deciduous; stigma lobes flat, flared. Fruit a berry, globose, ellipsoid to ovoid; mesocarp fleshy; calyx persistent. Pyrenes usually 1–6 (–10) per berry, subglobose, broadly ellipsoid to ovoid, or plano-convex when 2 pyrenes per berry, sometimes with a well-defined longitudinal furrow on one side, usually smooth, sometimes minutely and sparsely tuberculate or papillate, light brown, grey, black or purple-black, dull or glossy, strophiolate. Endosperm cream or white.