Myristica Gronov.

Trees, dioecious (occasionally M. fragrans monoecious, M. crassa paroecious); stilt-roots sometimes present. Twigs lenticellate, sometimes flaky, in some New Guinea species with ridges and in places swollen, hollow, inhabited by ants; bark sometimes coal black. Leaves brittle when dry, lower surface often pale, papillose or not, dots present or absent; reticulation scalariform or a lax network (never as dense as in Knema, more abundant than in Horsfieldia). Inflorescences sometimes supra-axillary, either a pedunculate branched panicle with the flowers in subumbels, or a (sub)sessile woody simple or 2-4-armed wart-like or worm-like densely scar-covered brachyblast producing flowers at the apex (as in Knema), or less often a combination of the two types when the basal part is smooth and bears 1-3 sparsely or densely scarred brachyblasts at its extremity; basal cataphylls absent; bracts caducous. Flowers pedicellate, bracteole mostly persistent, often apical and embracing the perianth. Male flowers: perianth urceolate or tubular, leathery or carnose, tubular, inside glabrous, creamy; buds variable, cleft to various depths, lobes 3 (also 2 or 4), reflexed in anthesis. Androecium a stalked column with 8-30 completely fused linear anthers; androphore cylindrical, glabrous or pubescent; synandrium elongate, the apex often sterile, rarely shallowly hollowed. Female flowers: larger and more swollen than the male; ovary glabrous or hairy; style absent, stigma minutely bilobed. Infructescences sessile or stalked. Fruits globose to oblong, or pyriform, 1-10 cm long, glabrous, tomentose, or lanose; pericarp mostly thick, fleshy but firm; aril laciniate (nearly) to the base; seeds not variegated; albumen ruminate, with fixed oil and starch; cotyledons connate at the base and edges, divaricate.

A tropical plant.