Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees or shrubs, often epiphytic, often with white or yellowish milky sap.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Blades thick and often leathery. Margins entire and often revolute. Lateral veins inconspicuous on upper surface, more conspicuous below, usually parallel, often anastomosing.. Petiolate or sessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in paniculate cymes, sometimes solitary, subtended by bracts and often bracteoles. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious). Calyx of 4–5 sepals; sepals decussate or imbricate. Corolla of 4–9 petals. Stamens in staminate flowers usually numerous, connate at base; pistillate flowers without stamens, sometimes represented by staminodes or reduced to a vestigial ring around the ovary. Ovary superior (pistillate flowers), 4–10-carpellate, 1-celled with carpels connate at base or completely 4–10-celled; ovules numerous; styles distinct or connate; stigmas linear, peltate, or triangular. Staminate flowers ovary vestigial or absent.

Fruit: Capsules fleshy or leathery; tardily dehiscent. Seeds with a colored aril.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: