Introduction to the Ehretiaceae Family

The Ehretiaceae are a small family that was only somewhat recently (2016) pulled out of the closely related Boraginaceae family. I only discovered this somewhat recently since so many sources still refer to it as a subfamily of the Borage Family instead. This guide explains how to identify the Ehretiaceae family and how they differ from the new, narrower definition of the Boraginaceae.

My only experience with this mostly tropical family is with Tiquilia, which is a lovely, low-growing herb that is relatively common in the dry soils of the American Southwest. It has pretty, almost succulent leaves, and I always thought it would make a nice ground cover in a xeriscape. However, this means that all of my photos are of that genus. For people living in North America, this is by far the most common member of this family that you will see, although there are other shrubby, small tree, and parasitic species, especially once you get into Mexico. I will add more as I find them!  

Common Botanical Description of the Ehretiaceae Family

If you’re new to plant morphology, this guide is a perfect beginner’s description for learning to identify the Ehretiaceae family without needing to know any scientific jargon. Below this section is additional information on uses and morphology, followed by pictures of individual species found in North America. But for researchers or those wanting to learn a more in-depth version, refer to the Scientific Botanical Description below the images for highly detailed scientific descriptions and genus-level distribution data.

Leaves and Stems of the Ehretiaceae: This family is mostly woody shrubs or trees, often with fibrous bark and whitish twigs, but perennial herbs and parasitic plants that don’t use chlorophyll are also seen. Leaves are simple (not compound) and arranged alternately along the stem on stalks, although sometimes they are reduced to tiny scales. Margins may be smooth or sometimes with rounded teeth.

Flowers of the Ehretiaceae: Flowers usually have both male (stamens) and female (ovary, stigma, and style) parts in the same flower (bisexual), but occasionally separate male and female flowers are seen on separate male and female plants (called dioecious). Flowers and sepals are usually fused at the base with 5 lobes.

Reproductive Features of the Ehretiaceae: There are typically 5 stamens that often stick out past the throat of the flower tube and are sometimes attached to the petals. The ovary is usually surrounded by a nectary disk, and it has a style on top that is typically divided into 2 branches.

Fruits of the Ehretiaceae: Fruits are mostly drupes (fleshy fruits with a stony pit—like a cherry) with 1-2-seeded stones or 4 nutlets.

Uses of Ehretiaceae 

The Ehretiaceae, especially the Ehretia genus, are widely used for medicine (pain, fever, and dysentery), timber and furniture, and their edible drupes, especially in Asia, Africa, and parts of the Americas. They are used for treating ailments like fever, dysentery, and pain, with wood for furniture and edible fruits.

Morphology of Ehretiaceae in North America

As I currently only have the herbaceous-looking Tiquilia genus, which are not particularly representative of the family, I will add morphology photos when I acquire more photos.

Some Ehretiaceae Species Found in North America

Tiquilia canescens—Shrubby Tiquilia

The shrubby tiquilia looks a lot more like an herb, but technically you could call it a shrub or sub-shrub because it is woody at the base. It is a short, very low-growing, spreading plant with gray-green, fleshy, egg-shaped leaves that look almost succulent and are often rather congested on its branches. Its 5-lobed tubular flowers are white to pinkish. It is native to the American Southwest in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Texas and in Northern Mexico in Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California.

Tiquilia greggii—Plumed Crinklemat

The plumed crinklemat is another herbaceous-looking low-growing shrub, generally with wider internodes, giving it a more spindly appearance. The leaves are also gray-green and somewhat succulent, but what stands out most are the feathery calyxes that appear in rounded masses with usually only 1-2 flowers blooming at a time. The feathery calyx apparently persists and assists in dispersing the seeds. This one is more rare, and in the United States it is only found in southern New Mexico and the southwestern corner of Texas, being most common throughout northern and central Mexico instead.

Scientific Botanical Description of the Ehretiaceae

Learn to identify the Ehretiaceae family based on its new narrow definition after being removed from the Boraginaceae.

Habit & Leaf Form of the Ehretiaceae Family

This family is mostly woody shrubs or trees, often with fibrous bark, oxidizing stems, and whitish twigs. Perennial herbs, hairy or hairless, are also seen, especially Tiquilia. Also, plants in the Pholismateae tribe are achlorphyllous root parasites with glandular hairs and leaves that are reduced to scales.

Leaves are simple, alternate, petiolate, entire to crenate, or occasionally dissected, and without stipules. In achlorophyllous root parasites, the leaves are typically reduced to scales.

Flowers of the Ehretiaceae Family

Inflorescences are axillary or sometimes terminal, usually laxly cymose, sometimes congested, and occasionally in few-flowered corymbs or solitary. In parasitic plants, they are condensed and more or less capitate.

Flowers are mostly bisexual, although occasionally plants are dioecious. Flowers are 4-5-merous, usually with radial symmetry. The often long, persistent calyx has 5 lobes, fused or free to the bases; aestivation is quincuncial or sometimes imbricate. The corolla is made of fused petals with 5 lobes; it is usually rotate, campanulate, or urn-shaped; aestivation is quincuncial or sometimes imbricate.

Androecium of the Ehretiaceae Family

There are 5 stamens that are often epipetalous and generally exserted.

Gynoecium of the Ehretiaceae Family

The ovary is 1-4-carpelled, superior, and generally subtended by a disk-like nectary. There is a bifid terminal style with an elongated club-shaped or head-shaped stigma. Placentation is apical to axile. There are usually 1 fertile ovule per carpel, apotropous, with integument 6-12 cells across, and epidermal cells anticlinally elongated or not. Parasitic members may have 10 or more ovules.

Fruit of the Ehretiaceae Family

Fruits are drupes, often surrounded by a persistent, accrescent calyx. They generally contain 1–2 seeded stones or four nutlets. Occasionally the fruit is a schizocarp. Seeds often have copious endosperm, but some seeds have none.

Taxonomy of Ehretiaceae

There are about 155 species in 10 genera in the Ehretiaceae family in the Boraginales order of the core eudicots (dicots). The Ehretiaceae family has frequently been treated as a subfamily of the Boraginaceae. A 2016 revision by the Boraginales Working Group, however, confirmed its status as a distinct family, and this is what is also listed on the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group, which I use as my most current authoritative source. This definition of the Ehretiaceae includes the Lennoaceae nested within it.

Genera:

Bourreria (48), Cortesia (?), Ehretia (50), Halgania (17 Australian endemic), Keraunea (5), Lennoa (1), Lepidocordia (2), Pholisma (3), Rochefortia (12), and Tiquilia (28).

Key Differences From Similar Families

The Ehretiaceae was recently split from the Boraginaceae, but the Boraginaceae can be distinguished by usually being herbs and virtually always having a gynobasic style rather than a terminal one in the Ehretiaceae.

The Cordiaceae was also recently split from the Boraginaceae, and it too is mostly woody trees and shrubs with fleshy drupes, but they have characteristic 4-lobed rather than bifid stigmas.

The Heliotropiaceae has also recently been split out of the Boraginaceae family, but it’s a family of more herbs and some trees that also produce drupes. However, it can usually be distinguished by its often deeply lobed ovary and cone-shaped stigma.

Distribution of Ehretiaceae

The Ehretiaceae are a mostly tropical and subtropical family throughout the tropics, though noticeably absent from eastern South America. There is also a strong presence of this family in the arid American Southwest.

Distribution of Ehretiaceae in the Americas

Canadian Genera Include:

Absent.

USA Genera Include:

Bourreria 3 spp native FL; Ehretia 1sp native TX; Pholisma 2-3 NAM endemic spp native CA and AZ; Tiquilia 9 spp native in all of W half of the USA, except for MT, also in MO.

Mexico Genera Include:

Bourreria spp native all of Mexico; Ehretia spp native all of Mexico; Lennoa monospecific endemic of Mexico, CAM, Colombia, and Venezuela; Lepidocordia 1 of 2 spp endemic Americas native SW, SE Mexico; Pholisma 2-3 NAM endemic spp. native to northern Mexico; Rochefortia spp neoendemic native to much of Mexico exc NW and C; Tiquilia ?? spp native throughout all of Mexico.  

Neotropical Genera Include:

Bourreria spp native CAM, Antilles, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador; Ehretia spp pantropical native in CAM, Antilles, N+E Brazil, N Argentina; Keraunea 5 of 5 spp endemic to eastern Brazil; Lennoa monospecific endemic of Mexico, CAM, Colombia, and Venezuela; Lepidocordia 2 of 2 spp endemic S Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Guyana, and N Brazil; Rochefortia 12 of 12 spp neo endemic Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Antilles, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru; Tiquilia spp native Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, N Chile, and NW+S Argentina.

Patagonia Genera Include:

Tiquilia native of S Argentina.

Additional Information and References

• Visit Lyrae’s Dictionary of Botanical Terms to learn the terminology of botanists. Note that if you hover over most of the words in the articles, you can also get definitions from them there.
• Willis, Lyrae (Unpublished). Plant Families of North America. This is where all of the family descriptions come from. Below should be most of my references for this, along with my own personal observations throughout North America.
• Canadensys: Acadia University, Université de Montréal Biodiversity Centre, University of Toronto Mississauga, University of British Columbia. http://data.canadensys.net/explorer (accessed 2020 – current)
• Watson, L., and Dallwitz, M.J. (1992+). The Families of Flowering Plants: descriptions, illustrations, identification, and information retrieval. Version: 2nd May 2020. delta-intkey.com. Accessed spring through fall of 2020.
• FNA (1993+). Flora of North America. https://floranorthamerica.org/Main_Page. Accessed 2022-current.
• GBIF.org (2020+), GBIF Home Page. Available from: https://www.gbif.org
• iNaturalist.org (2020+). https://www.inaturalist.org/. Accessed 2020-current.
• Naturalista: CONABIO http://www.naturalista.mx (Accessed 2020–current).
• Neotropikey: Milliken, W., Klitgård, B., & Baracat, A. eds. (2009+). Neotropikey: Interactive key and information resources for flowering plants of the Neotropics. www.kew.org/neotropikey.com (accessed 2020 – current).
• Patagonia Wildflowers: Wildflower Identification Site. https://patagoniawildflowers.org/ Accessed throughout the fall of 2020.
• POWO (2019+). Plants of the World Online. Facilitated by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Published on the Internet: http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/
• Michael G. Simpson 2021, Ehretiaceae, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, Revision 9, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=84713, accessed on April 24, 2026.
• Stevens, P. F. (2001+). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 14, July 2017 [more or less continuously updated since]. http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/
• USDA, NRCS. 2020. The PLANTS Database (http://plants.usda.gov, 2 June 2020). National Plant Data Team, Greensboro, NC, USA; Accessed 2020-present.
• WFO (2022): World Flora Online. Published on the Internet: http://www.worldfloraonline.org. Accessed Spring 2022 – current