mostly trees, sometimes shrubs or treelets; often hemiepiphytic (especially Schefflera)
Distribution
Neotropical genera are generally easy to distinguish on vegetative grounds.
Floral characters
Inflorescenses very characteristic, the ultimate clusters of small inconspicuous flowers or fruits arranged in umbels, these usually compounded into often large and complex terminal racemes or panicles.
Systematic remarks
in APG II two subfamilies: Hydrocotyloideae, Aralioideae
Leaf characters
leaves alternate; usually compound or palmately lobed, or pinnately bicompound; but Dendropanax and Oreopanax with simle leaves; leaves of different sizes and with differnet-length petioles, these often with sheating bases and a persistent stipulelike appendage (ligule) that approximates the conical terminal stipule of Moraceae
Stipules
present
Fruit characters
Fruit usually small, blackish and berrylike, sometimes drier and more or less longitudinally 5-furrowed (flattened in Didymopanax).
Glands
absent
Hairs
present, stellate hairs on stipules
Latex
absent
Uses
Dendropanax, Oreopanax, Schefflera, Didymopanax
Distribution maps
(online von http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/ . Dort zitiert wie unter jedem Diagramm vermerkt):
Araliaceae
map: see Meusel et al. 1978; Hultén & Fries 1986; FloraBase 2006; Trop. Afr. Fl. Pl. Ecol. Distr. 6. 2011
