Sabiaceae is a family of flowering plants that were placed in the order Proteales according to the APG IV system. It comprises three genera, Meliosma, Ophiocaryon and Sabia, with 66 known species, native to tropical to warm temperate regions of southern Asia and the Americas. The family has also been called Meliosmaceae Endl., 1841, nom. rej.
Description
Trees, climbing shrubs or woody vines, evergreen, rarely deciduous, glabrous or pubescent, rarely spiny. Indumentum of simple multicellular hairs or with bicellular capitula.
Leaves alternate, spiral to distichous, penninerved, brochidodromous, simple or imparipinnate, herbaceous or coriaceous, sometimes very large, with simple dentate edges, sometimes heteromorphic, often the base of the stalk is woody and the base of the foliole is pulvinulate, lacking stipules, vernation conduplicate, often dotted with red glands. Stomata anomocytic or paracytic, usually hypostomatic.
Stems with large radii, complex unilacunar nodes, without secretory cavities, perulate buds or not.
Hermaphrodite plants, rarely polygamodioecious.
Inflorescences in pauci- to multi-floral panicle, terminal or axillary, often reduced to solitary axillary flower, rarely on cymes or in racemes, peduncles often very short (sub-sessile flowers), bearing zero to numerous small bracts.
Small perfect flowers, actinomorphic or obliquely zygomorphic, usually pentamerous, sepals, petals and stamens arranged in opposed whorls. Hypogynous disc present, thin, annular, nectariferous, with lobes (sometimes with hardened discoid glands) alternating with the stamens, sometimes with bifid-shaped teeth. Sepals (4-)5, in a whorl, free or basally fused, equal or with the 2 internal sepals much smaller, imbricate. Petals (4-)5, in a whorl, free, equal or the 2 internal petals often much smaller (sometimes bifid), imbricate, oppositisepalous, more or less fleshy. Androecium of (4-)5(−6) elements, 5 stamens or even 2 (opposed to the internal petals) and 3 staminodes,...
