cymose-paniculate, sometimes reduced to one single cyme or racemiform, simple or in short 
axillary racemes, often with foliose bracts at the base of main branchings; flowers perfect, small, 
pedicellate, pale greenish-yellow, or greenish-white, urceolate or narrow campanulate, tepals six, 
erect in anthesis, in two whorls of three, more or less the same size and shape, glabrous or 
pubescent outside, usually sericeous inside, fertile stamens nine, in three whorls of three, all four 
celled (pollen sacs in two overlapping pairs) or the third whorl two celled (upper pair of pollen 
sacs missing), anthers of whorls I & II introrse, anthers of whorl III with upper cells latrorse and 
lower ones extrorse or extrorse-latrorse, filaments of third whorl with a pair of glands at the base 
or above it, staminodes of fourth whorl well developed, head distinct, broader than its pedicel, 
cordate or triangular in outline, pedicelate, hypanthium distinct, shallow or more or lees deep, 
ovaries subglobose, glabrous or barely pilose, unilocular, with one pendulous ovule, styles as 
long as ovaries or longer, stigmas discoid or triangular; fruits baccate, ellipsoid or subglobose, 
black or purplish, when ripe, borne in a cupule whose rim is either fringed with the more or less 
indurate or fleshy persistent tepals (sometimes only their base persistent), or entire (tepals 
deciduous). 
As currently circumscribed, Cinnamomum contains about 200-350 species (Kostermans, 
1986; Rohwer, 1993a), most of them in the Old World tropics, mainly in southeastern Asia. 
Kostermans started the revision of the genus studying the species of southern India, Australia, 
and the islands of the Pacific region (Kostermans, 1985, 1986). The genus is absent from Africa. 
Cinnamomum species are typically more numerous and abundant in humid mid-elevation 
regions along mountain ranges in tropical and subtropical areas. But a number of species occur 
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