STYRACACEAE (Styrax Family)
Plants shrubs or
small trees, usually pubescent with minute, stellate hairs, the wood often
resinous, the bark, twigs, and winter buds various. Leaves alternate, short- to
moderately petiolate, the fall foliage turning yellow. Stipules absent. Leaf
blades simple, narrowly to broadly elliptic, oblong-elliptic, ovate, or
oblong-obovate, tapered to a sharply pointed tip, angled or rounded at the
base, the margins entire or finely toothed, the surfaces usually stellate-hairy
when young, often becoming glabrous or nearly so at maturity. Inflorescences
axillary (sometimes appearing terminal on short branches in Styrax), of
solitary flowers or small clusters or racemes of 2–6 flowers. Flowers perfect,
actinomorphic, perigynous to epigynous (hypogynous elsewhere), relatively
long-stalked, not subtended by bractlets. Calyces 4- or 5-lobed, obconic to
narrowly obconic, the lobes mostly small, triangular, toothlike, glabrous or
sparsely stellate-hairy, persistent but often inconspicuous at fruiting.
Corollas deeply 4- or 5-lobed, bell-shaped or more or less saucer-shaped, white,
the lobes rounded to truncate and sometimes slightly irregular, the outer
surface moderately to densely stellate-hairy. Stamens 8 or 10, the filaments
usually attached in 1 row at the base of the corolla tube, sometimes fused into
a minute crown basally, glabrous, the anthers attached at their bases, linear,
dehiscing longitudinally. Pistil 1 per flower, of 2–4 fused carpels. Ovary
partially to entirely inferior (superior elsewhere), with 2–4, often incomplete
locules, the placentation axile. Style 1, unbranched, the stigmas minute or
capitate, entire or shallowly 3- or 4-lobed. Ovules 4–6 per locule. Fruits
various, mostly modified capsules (often indehiscent or irregularly and tardily
dehiscent), drupelike or samaralike in Missouri genera, variously shaped, the
surface glabrous or sparsely stellate-hairy. Seeds 1–3(4) per fruit, at most 1
per locule, narrowly ellipsoid or oblong-ellipsoid, the surface sometimes
shiny, sometimes longitudinally several-grooved, brown. Eleven genera, about
160 species, North America to South America, Caribbean Islands, Europe, Asia
south to Indonesia.
The family
Styracaceae has an extensive fossil history and some of the genera were once
more widespread than they are in the present day (Manchester et al., 2009).
Today, the majority of the species are in the widely distributed genus Styrax.
The main economic use of the family is for horticulture; several genera include
commonly cultivated species (Spongberg, 1976). A few of the larger tropical
species furnish wood for handcrafts. Some of the species also have medicinal
uses.