Botanical description
— Genus, Evodia (for euphony) Forst. Char. Gen. (as Euodia), t. 7.
Flowers. — More or less unisexual.
Sepals. — Four or five, imbricate.
Petals. — Four or five, valvate or very slightly imbricate.
Disc. — Sinuate
Stamens. — Four or five; filaments subulate or slightly dilated.
Ovary. — Of four or five carpers, usually distinct and style-]ike in the male flowers, more or less united in the females, styles attached below the middle, more or less united with a 4- or 5-lobed stigma.
Ovules. — Two in each carper, collateral or superposed.
Fruit. — Separating more or less completely into coriaceus two-valved cocci, the endocap separating elastically.
Seeds. — Seeds with a crustaceous testa, usually smooth and shining; albumen fleshy; embryo straight, with ovate cotyledons.
Unarmed trees or shrubs.
Leaves. — Opposite, usually digitately three-foliolate or pinnate, rarrely one-foliolate or simple leaflets entire, often large.
Cymes or panicles. — Axillary, or rarely telminal.
Flower. — Small.
A considerable genus, spread over tropical Asia and the islands of the Pacific, and of the Madagascar group; all but one of the Australian species are endemic. The genus differs from Melicope, chiefly in the stamens equal to, not double, the number of petals, from Zanthoxylum by the leaves all or mostly opposite, generally by the more valvate petals and more united styles, besides minor characters offering occasional exceptions. (B.Fl. i, 361.)