Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Polygamodioecious trees or rarely shrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Domatia present on lower surface in axils of secondary nerves or also often scattered over blade. Midrib and secondary veins often reddish pellucid. Petiolate to subsessile. Stipules interpetiolar, connate or occasionally distinct, valvate or imbricate in terminal bud, caducous; stipules usually bearing mucilage-producing colleters on inner surface that aid in protection of the growing shoot tip.

Flowers: Flowers 1–7 in axillary cymes, bracts and bracteoles inconspicuous. Flowers insect-pollinated, functionally unisexual or sometimes bisexual (perfect), often heterostylous. Calyx limb short, lobed, toothed, or entire, persistent in fruit. Corolla actinomorphic, rarely irregular or zygomorphic and bilabiate, greenish to yellowish or sometimes white, salverform to narrowly funnelform, (3)4-5(8-10)-lobed, the lobes strongly imbricate in bud; nectary disk usually present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted in or below corolla throat, the anthers partially exserted, represented in pistillate flowers by sessile, included staminodia; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior; ovary of pistillate flowers usually 4–10(–12)–celled, occasionally 2–celled in perfect flowers; ovules 1 per cell, pendulous, anatropous to hemitropous, usually with a funicular obturator and a massive single ingegument; placentation axile, basal, apical, or rarely parietal; style 1 with as many stigmatic arms as ovary cells, terminal, slender, exserted in pistillate flowers, included in staminate flowers; stigmas lobed or capitate, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; purplish to black; containing separate; thick–walled; 1–seeded pyrenes. Seeds without endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: