Author: Linnaeus
Morphological description
Tree or shrub, sometimes with spiny branchlets. Stipules caducous.
Leaves spirally arranged, paripinnate or partially bipinnate. Leaflets few pairs per leaf.
Inflorescences crowded on short shoots, axillary, terminal, racemose (campech Haemat infl lf 256071 ).
Flowers small, bisexual; bracts minute, absent at anthesis; bracteoles none. Hypanthium short. Calyx covering the rest of the flower in bud, slightly unequal, 5-lobed, lobes imbricate, soon deciduous. Petals 5, imbricate, subequal. Stamens 10, fertile, free; filaments pilose at base; anthers introrse. Ovary shortly stipitate, free, 2- or 3-ovuled; style filiform; stigma small, terminal.
Pods lanceolate or elliptic-oblong, compressed, two-valved, valves thin (campechianum Haemat pods 386537).
Seeds transversely oblong, exalbuminous (campech Haematox pod/sd 256073 ).
Distribution
Tropical America and SW Africa. Three species, one of them (Haematoxylum campechianum ) cultivated in Malesia.