Important: Safety Warning
This page recommends pest-control substances such as arsenic compounds, strychnine, or cyanide — in some cases applied to food crops. These substances are lethal to humans and animals, and their use is now banned or strictly controlled.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Myrtaceae
A large order of trees, shrubs, or very rarely sub-shrubs, scarcely ever sub-scandent, inhabiting, for the most part, the tropical regions of the globe. Inflorescence axillary, simple, racemose or racemose-paniculate, rarely cymose. Leaves simple, entire, or rarely obscurely crenate-serrate, opposite or alternate, often dotted from pellucid glands sunk into the parenchyma, narrowed into a petiole at the base (or sessile); stipules usually none, or rarely geminate at the base of the petioles, minute, caducous. The order comprises about seventy-six genera and 1800 species. Illustrative genera are: Darwinia, Hypocalymma, Leptospermum, Melaleuca, and Myrtus.