Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Soft–stemmed shrubs or small trees with milky sap, usually unbranched with a terminal cluster of leaves, rarely prostrate herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple or compound (palmate). Alternate. Blades palmately lobed. Palmately veined. Long-petiolate. Stipules absent, rarely present and spine-like.

Flowers: Flowers in cymose, axillary clusters or sometimes solitary. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants dioecious or sometimes monoecious), actinomorphic. Calyx small, 5-lobed or 5-toothed. Corolla tubular, 5-lobed in staminate flowers or divided nearly to base in pistillate flowers. Stamens 10, in 2 whorls, sometimes only 5 and alternate with the corolla lobes; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 5-carpellate, 1-celled, placentation parietal, the placentas ± deeply intruded, sometimes joined in the center to form a 5-celled ovary with axile placenta; ovules numerous, anatropous; stigmas 5.

Fruit: Large; fleshy berry. Seeds with soft; fleshy endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: