Evergreen trees or shrubs. Terminal buds not perulate, inconspicuous.
Leaves opposite, penninerved.
Inflorescences botryoid to paniculate, not involucrate, but usually with scars of fallen bracts at their base.
Flowers trimerous, bisexual. Tepals 6, equal, usually erect at anthesis. Fertile stamens 6 or 3, the third androecial whorl or the second and third whorl sterile, staminodes of the third whorl massive, enlarged, often peltate and overarching the outer stamens, with a pair of glands at their base. Anthers 2-locular, usually without a distinct filament, pollen sacs introrse or apical. Staminodes of the fourth androecial whorl subulate, or absent, or fused with the staminodes of the third whorl. Ovary enclosed in a deeply urceolate to tubular receptacle.
Fruit completely enclosed in the accrescent receptacular tube, crowned by the persistent tepals and remnants of the stamens.
Madagascar. About 30 species.
Among the Malagasy Lauraceae, Aspidostemon is easily recognized by its opposite leaves and flowers with only 3 or 6 fertile stamens surrounding a cushion-like structure in the center. Aspidostemon is a member of the Cryptocarya group, and it had been included in Cryptocarya until Richter (1981) found that its wood structure was incompatible with that genus.
Further information:
Richter, H.G. 1981. Anatomie des sekundären Xylems und der Rinde der Lauraceae. Sonderbände des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins in Hamburg 5: 1-148.
van der Werff, H. 2006. A revision of the Malagasy endemic genus Aspidostemon Rohwer & Richter (Lauraceae). Adansonia, sér. 3, 28: 7-44.