Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, shrubs, lianas, or sometimes herbs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Margins entire or rarely toothed. Pinnately veined or 3--7-veined from base. Petiolate. Stipules usually present, usually interpetiolar, often with colleters, sometimes reduced to interpetiolar lines.

Flowers: Flowers perfect or functionally unisexual, actinomorphic, solitary or-in cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or functionally unisexual, actinomorphic. Calyx (2)4–5-lobed, the lobes imbricate. Corolla 4–5(–15)-lobed, the tube usually elongate, the lobes imbricate, convolute, or valvate; nectary disk weakly developed or absent. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted on the corolla tube or throat; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior or partly inferior, 2–3(4)-carpellate, with as many cells, sometimes partitions imperfect in upper part of ovary, placentation axile; ovules numerous, rarely 1 to several, anatropous to hemitropous; style terminal; stigma capitate or lobed.

Fruit: Septicidal or occasionally loculicidal or circumscissile capsules; sometimes a berry; rarely a drupe. Seeds ± winged at both ends or all around; endosperm oily; proteinaceous; wilh saccharose or hemicellulose.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: