Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Aromatic herbs or subshrubs, occasionally shrubs, small trees, or lianas, ± epiphytic, usually with globose ethereal oil cells in parenchyma tissue.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, rarely opposite or whorled. Petioles usually present. Stipules adnate to petioles or absent.

Flowers: Flowers in dense, fleshy spikes, each one subtended by a minute peltate bract. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual, perianth absent. Calyx (sepals) absent. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 1–10; filaments usually distinct; anthers monothecal or dithecal, opening by 1–2 longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 1-carpellate (Peperomia) or 2–4(5)-carpellate (Piper), 1-celled, placentation basal or nearly so; ovules 1 per cell, orthotropous, erect; stigmas 1–4.

Fruit: Berry-like or drupaceous. Seeds 1 per fruit; with scanty endosperm and copious; starchy perisperm; embryo scarcely or not differentiated into parts when seed ripens.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: