Alseodaphne is a genus of timber trees (ca. 40 spp.) belonging to the Persea group of the Lauraceae. It is widely distributed in tropical Asia, but is often confused with Dehaasia and Nothaphoebe, and the systematics of the genus is unclear. Here, the complete chloroplast genome sequences of A. semecarpifolia will be reported, the type species of Alseodaphne, and two China-endemic species, A. gracilis and A. huanglianshanensis. The three plastomes were 153 051 bp, 153 099 bp and 153 070 bp, respectively. Comparative genomic analyses indicate that the three Alseodaphne plastomes have similar genome size and those are very different with previously published plastomes of Lauraceae in length. The length difference is directly caused by inverted repeats expansion/contraction. Four highly variable loci including psbD-trnM, ndhF-rpl32, rpl32-trnL and ycf1 among the three Alseodaphne species were identified as useful plastid candidate barcodes for Alseodaphne and Lauraceae species. Phylogenetic analyses based on 12 complete plastomes of Lauraceae species confirm a monophyletic Persea group comprising species of Alseodaphne, Phoebe, Persea and Machilus.