Aperula Blume; Benzoin Schaeffer; Daphnidium Nees; Parabenzoin Nakai; Polyadenia Nees.

Evergreen or deciduous trees or shrubs, aromatic, dioecious. Leaves alternate, entire on margins or 3-lobed, pinninerved, trinerved, or triplinerved. Umbels singular and axillary, or 2 to numerous tufted on abbreviated and axillary branch, pedunculate or not; involucral bracts 4, decussate. Flowers unisexual, yellow or greenish yellow. Tepals 6, sometimes 7-9, equal in size or outer whorl slightly larger, usually deciduous. Male flowers with 9 fertile stamens, sometimes 12, stamens usually arranged into 3 whorls; anthers 2-celled, introrse, with 2 stipitate glands at filament base; reduced pistil small, sometimes style and stigma joined in a small mucro. Female flowers: staminodes usually 9, sometimes 12 or 15, fasciated, with 2 flat sessile reniform glands, on both sides of staminodes; ovary globose or ellipsoid. Berry or drupe, globose or ellipsoid, green when young and red or purple at maturity, with 1 seed; perianth tubes inflated into a hypocarpium at base of fruit or cup-shaped and enclosed from base to middle of fruit.

The following species were described from China but could not be treated here because no material was seen by the present authors:

Lindera sinensis (Blume) Hemsley (J. Linn. Soc., Bot. 26: 392. 1891; Daphnidium sinense Blume, Mus. Bot. 1: 352. 1851), described from China.

Lindera velutina H. Liu (Laurac. Chine & Indochine, 137. 1932), described from Guizhou.

Species incertae sedis

Lindera doniana C. K. Allen, J. Arnold Arbor. 22: 10. 1941.
贡山山胡椒 gong shan shan hu jiao

?Small trees. Branchlets slightly stout, striate, gray-brown, glabrous, ferruginous tomentose on young parts. Leaves alternate; petiole 5–8 mm, stout, pubescent; leaf blade usually shiny and rather pale abaxially, broadly lanceolate or elliptic, 5–9 × 2–2.5(–3) cm, subleathery, nearly glabrous and later glabrous adaxially, pinninerved, lateral veins 7–10 pairs, distinctly convex abaxially, rather concave adaxially, densely villous, reticu- late veins dense and distinct, base cuneate, apex acuminate, acutely subrounded, or slightly emarginate. Male umbels 1–3, inserted at leaf axil, shortly pedunculate, 6–8-flowered; bracts usually persistent, adnate pubescent on middle of outside; tepal ?6 (seen after bloom). Fruits subglobose, ca. 6 mm in diam.; stipes ca. 3.5 mm, stout, pubescent; hypocarpium slightly plano-compressed, ca. 3 mm in diam., pubescent.

Broad-leaved forests; ca. 2300 m. NW Yunnan (Gongshan) [NE India].

According to the specimen T. T. Yu 20015, which was cited by Allen in the protologue, Lindera doniana is similar to L. nacusua, but its leaves, petioles, and peduncles are rather long. Flowering and fruiting materials have not been seen by the present authors, so a definitive placement for the species cannot be made.

About 100 species: temperate to tropical regions of Asia and North America; 38 species (23 endemic) in China; one additional species is of uncertain placement.

(Authors: Cui Hongbin (崔鸿宾 Tsui Hung-pin); Henk van der Werff)