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The pantropical Picrodendraceae produce mostly spheroidal to slightly oblate, echinate pollen grains equipped with narrow circular to elliptic pori that can be hard to identify to family level in both extant and fossil material using light microscopy only. Fossil pollen of the family have been described from the Paleogene of America, Antarctica, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, but until now none have been reported from Afro-India. Extant pollen described here include representatives from all recent Picrodendraceae genera naturally occurring in Africa and/or Madagascar and south India and selected closely related tropical American taxa. Our analyses, using combined light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy, show that pollen of the Afro-Indian genera encompass three morphological types: Type 1, comprising only Hyaenanche ; Type 2, including Aristogeitonia , Mischodon, Oldfieldia and Voatamalo ; Type 3, comprising the remaining two genera, Androstachys and Stachyandra . Based on the pollen morphology presented here it is evident that some previous light microscopic accounts of spherical and echinate fossil pollen affiliated with Arecaceae, Asteraceae, Malvaceae, and Myristicaceae from the African continent could belong to Picrodendraceae. The pollen morphology of Picrodendraceae, fossil pollen records, a dated intra-familial phylogeny, seed dispersal modes, and the regional Late Cretaceous to early Cenozoic paleogeography, together suggest the family originated in the Americas and dispersed from southern America across Antarctica and into Australasia. A second dispersal route is believed to have occurred from the Americas into continental Africa via the North Atlantic Land Bridge and Europe.

An ongoing re-investigation of the early Miocene Saldanha Bay (South Africa) palynoflora, using combined light and scanning electron microscopy (single grain method), is revealing several pollen types new to the African fossil record. One of the elements identified is Loranthaceae pollen. These grains represent the first and only fossil record of Loranthaceae in Africa. The fossil pollen grains resemble those produced by the core Lorantheae and are comparable to recent Asian as well as some African taxa/lineages. Molecular and fossil signals indicate that Loranthaceae dispersed into Africa via Asia sometime during the Eocene. The present host range of African Loranthaceae and the composition of the palynoflora suggest that the fossil had a range of potential host taxa to parasitise during the early Miocene in the Saldanha Bay region.