Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Small trees, shrubs, or subshrubs, sometimes spiny, glabrous or pubescent with simple, t–shaped or clavate, glandular hairs, with well–developed schizogenous secretory canals in parenchyma tissues.

Stems: Branches often twining or flexuous.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate, often crowded toward the ends of the branches, sometimes so much so as to appear whorled. Blades usually leathery or coriaceous. Margins usually entire, often undulate. Petiolate or subsessile. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in solitary or in short corymbs or cymose panicles. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants polygamous or dioecious), actinomorphic or slightly irregular. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct or basally connate, imbricate. Corolla of 5 petals, slightly connate or sometimes distinct, imbricate. Stamens 5, alternate with the petals; filaments distinct or basally connate; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or terminal pores. Ovary superior, 2(–5)-carpellate, 1(–5)-celled, placentation intruded parietal, basal–parietal, or rarely axile; ovules several to numerous, anatropous to almost campylotropous; style 1; stigma capitate or slightly lobed.

Fruit: Loculicidal; or rarely both loculicidal and septicidal capsules or berries. Seeds usually embedded in viscid pulp; endosperm well–developed; fleshy; oily; and proteinaceous.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: