Shrubs or trees, evergreen. Bark gray [pinkish, purplish, or maroon-brown], smooth with small, wartlike lenticels. Leaves alternate [rarely opposite or clustered at tips of branches]. Leaf blade pinnately veined, papery or leathery; surfaces glabrous or variously pubescent; domatia absent. Inflorescences appearing when mature leaves are present, axillary, panicles (rarely heads). Flowers bisexual; tepals deciduous, white or green, equal (rarely unequal), at anthesis mostly erect, glabrous (or pubescent); stamens 3, anthers 2-locular, 2-valvate, apical (or introrse); staminodes 9, 6, 3, or 0; ovary superior, enclosed by deep floral tube. Drupe red or purple, ellipsoid, seated in deep, usually double-rimmed cupule.

Distribution

Restricted to neotropics.

Discussion

Species ca. 40 (1 in the flora).

Selected References

Kurz, H. 1983. Fortpflanzungsbiologie einiger Gattungen neotropischer Lauraceen und Revision der Gattung Licaria (Lauraceae). Ph.D. thesis. University of Hamburg.

Lower Taxa

Licaria triandra