Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Evergreen or deciduous trees, shrubs, or sometimes climbers, prickly or sometimes unarmed, glandular punctate, often aromatic.

Stems: Young branches and inflorescences subtended by a pair of bud scales.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnate or sometimes unifoliate by reduction). Alternate, leaflets opposite or alternate. Leaflets, at least lateral ones, usually inequilateral. Margins entire to crenate. Rachis terete (cylindrical) or winged. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary or terminal, cymose, paniculate, or racemose inflorescences. Flowers unisexual (and the plants dioecious or rarely monoecious) or rarely bisexual (perfect). Calyx of 4–5 sepals or perianth consisting of 5-9 tepals in 1 series, distinct or basally connate. Corolla of 4-5 petals, valvate or imbricate in bud. Stamens (2–)4–6, alternate with the petals, absent or rudimentary in pistillate flowers; filaments filiform to subulate; anthers medifixed, elliptic to ovate or suborbicular in staminate flowers. Ovary superior, 1–5-carpellate, carpels distinct or basally connate, usually some of them abortive, rudimentary or absent in staminate flowers; ovules 2 per carpel, pendulous; styles coherent or divergent; stigmas capitate.

Fruit: Fruit of 1–5 dehiscent; coriaceous to thin; woody follicles; pericarp red to black; often tuberculate; glandular. Seeds ovoid to globose or oblong; on a slender funicle; seed coat glossy black or reddish; embryo curved or straight; cotyledons elliptic–ovate to orbicular; foliaceous.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: