Family Meliaceae
Description: Evergreen or deciduous trees or shrubs, bark sometimes with a milky latex; indumentum simple or stellate.
Leaves alternate, usually 1-pinnate, rarely 2–3-pinnate or rarely simple, margins mostly entire.
Inflorescences usually axillary panicles, rarely racemose, spicate or whorled. Flowers actinomorphic, bisexual or unisexual. Sepals 3–5, free or fused. Petals usually 3–6, rarely up to 14, fused at base or coherent with each other and staminal tube. Stamens usually 4–10; filaments free or more often variously united to form a tube and either filaments free towards apex or anthers on margin or within throat of staminal tube; anthers 2-locular, dehiscing longitudinally, introrse. Disc present or absent. Ovary superior, usually 2–6-carpellate, and with as many loculi; ovules 1–many per loculus; stigma various.
Fruit a capsule, berry or drupe or rarely a nut; seeds sometimes winged.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 52 genera, c. 600 species, chiefly tropical regions. Australia: 11 genera, 38 species, Qld, N.S.W., N.T., S.A., W.A.
External links:
Angiosperm Phylogeny Website (Family: Meliaceae, Order: Sapindales)
Wikipedia
Text by M. J. Taylor & G. J. Harden
Taxon concept:
Taxa not yet included in identification key
Cipadessa
| | Key to the genera | |
| 1 | Leaves compound with 2–many leaflets; petals less than 2 cm long | 2 |
| Leaves simple; petals c. 2.5 cm long | Turraea |
| 2 | Leaves 2–3-pinnate, leaflets usually more or less toothed | Melia |
| Leaves 1-pinnate, leaflets generally entire
Back to 1 | 3 |
| 3 | Stamens with filaments free; seeds winged | Toona |
| Stamens with filaments fused into a tube; seeds not winged
Back to 2 | 4 |
| 4 | Fruit a drupe with woody endocarp; staminal tube with frilly lobes and terminated by appendages | Owenia |
| Fruit a capsule; staminal tube not as above
Back to 3 | 5 |
| 5 | Leaves with usually 10–23 leaflets; staminal tube attached about halfway to petals | Dysoxylum |
| Leaves with 2–11 leaflets; staminal tube not fused to petals
Back to 4 | 6 |
| 6 | Leaves imparipinnate, leaflets 5–11; capsule depressed-globose | Synoum |
| Leaves paripinnate, leaflets 2 or 4, or rarely 6; capsule obovoid or globose
Back to 5 | Anthocarapa |
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