Trees or shrubs, lower leaflet surfaces tomentose; apices emarginate; fruits with variable numbers and placements of flattened, almost cylindrical or long spines, densely lanose, tomentose or villous.

Polylepisreticulata Hieron.

The sectional epithet Reticulatae is a plural adjective agreeing in gender with Polylepis. Section Reticulatae, first informally recognized by Simpson (1979) and later recovered as monophyletic in the phylogenetic analysis of Schmidt-Lebuhn et al. (2006a), contains species with relatively few lateral leaflets pairs, rugose or shiny upper leaflet surfaces, emarginate leaflet apices and felt-like covering on the lower leaflet surfaces. All species placed in this section have the lower leaflet surfaces with an evenly distributed dense layer of short, white to yellowish pannose hairs, admixed with short to moderately long tomentose hairs. As in section Sericeae, species in this section have fruits with straight or recurved spines. Polylepismicrophylla, P.occidentalis and P.quadrijuga have many lateral leaflet pairs (3–6), but all three have rugose or shiny upper leaflet surfaces and emarginate leaflet apices. The most distinct species of this section is P.hieronymi, which has sparsely tomentose upper leaflet surfaces and almost cylindrical fruits with long spines. This is also the geographically most remote species, being separated by over 1500 km from the other members of the section. Polylepismicrophylla also has atypical, turbinate fruits. Polylepisquadrijuga is similar in some ways to P.frontinensis and P.lanuginosa of section Sericeae, but these species do not have the dense layer of short pannose hairs admixed with tomentose hairs on the lower leaflet surfaces. Table 5 provides an overview of the arrangement of the taxa by different authors.