Evergreen trees. Terminal buds not perulate.
Leaves alternate, distinctly clustered at the tips of the branches, penninerved.
Inflorescences dibotryoid, not involucrate.
Flowers trimerous, bisexual. Tepals 6, equal, opening very little at anthesis. Fertile stamens 3, representing the third androecial whorl, the two outer whorls represented by staminodes, stamens of the third whorl with a pair of glands at the base of the filaments. Anthers 2-locular, extrorse, exserted and bent outwards. Staminodes of the first, second, and fourth androecial whorl well-developed, subulate to scale-like. Ovary enclosed in an urceolate to tubular receptacle.
Fruit ellipsoid, seated on a slightly thickened pedicel ending in a minute cupule. Tepals or their basal part persistent but scarcely recognizable below the fruit.
Tropical America. 2 species.
It is uncertain if Clinostemon should be included in Mezilaurus or not. When Clinostemon was reinstated by Kubitzki et al. (1979), they included two species, C. mahuba and C. maguireanum. Later van der Werff (1987) accepted both of them as species of Mezilaurus. Recently, however, Macêdo Alves (2011) presented molecular evidence suggesting that the type species, C. mahuba, was closer to Sextonia than to the rest of Mezilaurus. If this was confirmed, then Clinostemon would need to be accepted as a valid genus. The second species, however, is not C. maguireanum, which stays in Mezilaurus as M. thoroflora, but a species described as Mezilaurus triunca by van der Werff (1994), which agrees with C. mahuba in having recurved stamens, 9 staminodes, and glands at the base of the filaments in the third androecial whorl.
Further information:
Alves, F.M. 2011. Estudo taxonômico e filogenético de Mezilaurus Taub. (Lauraceae) sensu lato e restabelecimento de Clinostemon Kuhlm. & A. Samp. PhD thesis, Universidade de São Paulo.
Kubitzki, K., Kurz, H. & Richter, H.G. 1979. Reinstatement of Clinostemon (Lauraceae). J. Arnold Arbor. 60: 515
van der Werff, H. 1987. A Revision of Mezilaurus (Lauraceae). Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 74: 153–182.
van der Werff, H. 1994. Novelties in Neotropical Lauraceae. Novon 4: 58-76.