1. Lindera Thunb.

Plants shrubs (trees elsewhere), often colonial from rhizomes and/or root suckers. Twigs slender, reddish brown to dark brown, usually, with scattered, pale, slender, elongate lenticels, glabrous or sparsely to moderately pubescent with slender hairs, producing a spicy aroma when broken or bruised. Winter buds sessile, narrowly ovoid to narrowly ellipsoid, with a few overlapping scales, those producing inflorescences nearly globose, short-stalked, and with several scales. Leaves all unlobed, those produced first in the season often much smaller, more circular and more bluntly pointed (in L. benzoin) to more slender and more tapered (in L. melissifolia), than those produced afterward, the blades on expanding shoots ovate, elliptic, or obovate (somewhat more narrowly so in L. melissifolia), tapered to a sharply pointed tip, rounded, angled, or tapered at the base, the surfaces variously glabrous or hairy, the venation with a single main vein and pinnate secondary veins, the network of tertiary veinlets between the secondary veins prominent or obscure. Inflorescences dense axillary clusters, produced before the leaves develop on portions of branches at least 1 year old. Flowers very short-stalked, the stalks elongating to 12 mm, remaining green, and slender or becoming slightly thickened as the fruit matures. Tepals 1–3 mm long (those of staminate flowers slightly longer than those of pistillate flowers), narrowly oblong-elliptic to oblong-ovate, bright yellow to lemon yellow or light yellow. Staminate flowers with 3 of the stamens having a pair of stalked, more or less 2-lipped, yellow nectaries at the base. Pistillate flowers with 6 to numerous staminodes, the ovary ovoid to ellipsoid, the style elongate, expanded apically into an asymmetrical, sometimes slightly 2-lobed stigma. Fruits red drupes, not appearing jointed to the tip of the not or only slightly expanded (nonbulbous), green to brownish green stalk, 6–12 mm long, ellipsoid, shiny, the seed 4–7 mm long, broadly ellipsoid to nearly globose, the surface dark brown or reddish brown, usually mottled with lighter or darker brown or with some portions covered with a pale deposit, with a faint pair of longitudinal ridges or these lacking, otherwise appearing smooth or slightly granular. About 100 species, North America, Asia, south to Australia.