Description: Soft-wooded trees or shrubs, glabrous, mostly dioecious.
Leaves flat, usually petiolate.
Inflorescences axillary or terminal racemes, the female flowers often also in terminal panicles. Calyx shortly lobed. Male flowers with 13–23 stamens radiating in a single whorl round a central disc with raised rim, anthers oblong, nearly sessile. Female flowers with 25–60 carpels, fused in a ring round a central column dilated into a flat disc at the top.
Fruit bell-shaped; carpels dry, dehiscent on inner margin, but often falling entire; seeds of adjoining carpels alternately placed at top of the carpel and below the top, each with a small aril.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 3 species, endemic Australia. Australia: all mainland States, widespread in southern temperate regions.
Text by G. J. Harden
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Leaves more or less linear, 1–3 mm wide; seeds smooth | Codonocarpus pyramidalis |
| Leaves lanceolate to obovate, 3–30 mm wide; seeds wrinkled | 2 |
| 2 | Apex of leaves obtuse or shortly pointed; petiole 5–10 mm long; fruiting pedicels 12–22 mm long | Codonocarpus cotinifolius |
| Leaves tapering into a long apical point; petiole 10–25 mm long; fruiting pedicels 20–50 mm long
Back to 1 | Codonocarpus attenuatus |
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