The anthers are basifixed and broadly reniform, opening by a transverse, apical cleft.

The style is short and stout, surmounted by three small, triangular stigmas, these located opposite the stamens.

[4][1] It is dorso-ventrally flattened into a disk which hangs lantern-like from the peduncle attached at its center.

In most of its close relatives, the three locules of the ovary become three separate fruits, but in Anthodon, they are united for their entire length and over half their width into a trilobed capsule with a notch at the end of each lobe.

The basal part of the seed is a membranous wing with a single, central vein that forms as a remnant of the funiculus.

The name Anthodon was coined by Ruiz and Pavon in 1798 in their masterpiece, Flora Peruviana et Chilensis.

At the end of their description, they wrote, "Genus Anthodon à foliolis calycinis et petalis dentato-ciliatis nominavimus".

[3] In a treatment of the family Celastraceae in 2004, Mark Simmons placed Anthodon in the subfamily Hippocrateoideae, which contains about 100 species.

[1] The subfamily Hippocrateoideae (sensu Simmons) encompasses about a third of the species of the now defunct family Hippocrateaceae that was erected by Jussieu in 1811.

Most authors have recognized fewer genera and some have put all of the 100 or so species into one genus, a very broadly circumscribed Hippocratea.