Xylotheca Hochst.

Shrubs or small trees, unarmed. Leaves deciduous, alternate, thin to leathery at full maturity, entire or undulate, petiolate, penninerved; stipules small, caducous. Flowers usually large and showy, white, sweet-scented, bisexual or andromonoecious, cymose or umbellate in the upper leaf-axils, or terminal on short branchlets. Sepals 3 (or 4), concave, free or almost so, imbricate, rather early caducous, glabrous or pubescent, often with sessile resinous glands. Petals 7–14, free, narrowed to the base, imbricate, spreading at anthesis. Stamens 20–30; filaments free, filiform; anthers linear, basifixed, dehiscing longitudinally from above. Ovary (rudimentary or absent in the ♂ flowers) sessile, 1-locular, the 6 or 7 placentas multi-ovulate; style terminal, columnar; stigmas as many as placentas, rather short and spreading. Fruit a woody capsule splitting into (4–)6–8 longitudinal rather thick valves; style persistent as a hard apical point. Seeds numerous, ellipsoid, arillate or embedded in a thin pulp.