Alternative names: Not Applicable

Description:
Shrubs or trees usually short-lived and soft-wooded, dioecious or if monoecious then with male and female flowers on separate inflorescences; leaves alternate, entire, more or less fleshy, with small stipules.

Inflorescence racemose but with a range of reduction to single axillary flowers, usually towards the ends of leafy branches; bracts scale-like to almost absent; flowers actinomorphic, unisexual; calyx a cup- or saucer-shaped more or less lobed tube, with 3-12 lobes; corolla absent; male flowers with 7-numerous stamens, with 2-locular anthers almost sessile in 1 or more whorls around a central axis and dehiscing laterally; female flowers with 1 to numerous apocarpous carpels arranged in 1 row around the central axis; carpels laterally compressed, with a single axillary ovule in the ovary, with a sessile papillose stigma often attached to the upper ventral side but then recurved or spreading.

Fruit dry, dehiscing, follicle-like but usually the whole pericarp deciduous before the seed is shed; seeds with curved or U-shaped embryos, endosperm and a more or less developed aril.

Distribution:  4 genera and 17 species endemic to mainly arid and temperate scrub vegetation of Australia, where they are often found in burnt or disturbed areas.

Biology: No text

Taxonomic notes: The family was traditionally placed in or in association with the Phytolaccaceae. It has, however, now been shown that it differs from other members of the order Centrospermae (to which Phytolaccaceae belong) by its plastids, chromosomes and pollen sculpturing and has closer affinities with families placed in the order Capparales (such as Cruciferae and Capparaceae) (A. S. George (1982) Gyrostemonaceae in Fl. Aust. 8:362-379).

Key to Genera:

1. Male and female flowers borne in long racemes with scale-like bracts; fruits bell-shaped, with the follicles splitting along the inside	CODONOCARPUS 1.
1. Male and female flowers borne singly in the axil of leaves, or rarely in short racemes less than c. 2 cm long; fruit spherical or almost round in side view, with the follicles splitting along the outer ridge	GYROSTEMON 2.

Author: Prepared by H. R. Toelken