Omphalea is a plant genus of the family Euphorbiaceae first described as a genus in 1759.Linnaeus, Carl von. 1759. Systema Naturae, Editio Decima 2: 1254, 1264, 1378 in LatinTropicos It is native to tropical parts of the Americas, the West Indies, Asia, Australia, and Africa (including Madagascar).Kew World Checklist of Selected Plant FamiliesGovaerts, R., Frodin, D.G. & Radcliffe-Smith, A. (2000). World Checklist and Bibliography of Euphorbiaceae (and Pandaceae) 1-4: 1-1622. The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Omphalea has monoecious, apetalous flowers and fleshy fruits with hard centers.
Ecology The plants are toxic and few animals can eat them. Diurnal moths of the subfamily Uraniinae feed on them. These moths are species of the genus Urania in the Americas, and of the genus Chrysiridia in Africa.
The only species from mainland Africa is O. mansfeldiana, a liana from Tanzania. The Madagascan species are O. ankaranensis, a shrub from the limestone karst of northern Madagascar, O. palmata Leandri, a dry forest shrub closely related to O. ankaranensis but from western Madagascar, O. occidentalis Leandri, also a dry forest species of western Madagascar, and O. oppositifilia (Willdenow), a tree from the east coast rainforest of Madagascar.
The Madagascan sunset moth (Chrysiridia rhipheus) feeds on all four of these species.
Species
formerly included moved to other genera (Mabea Phyllanthus Sapium Sebastiania Senefeldera )
References