Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs to medium-sized trees.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or rarely whorled (3 per node). Pinnately veined. Usually petiolate. Stipules interpetiolar or rarely intrapetiolar, distinct, persistent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary or terminal cymes, peduncles short, bracteoles connate into a cup-like structure. Flowers insect-pollinated, bisexual (perfect), often heterostylus. Calyx 4–5 lobed with open aestivation, truncate or minutely toothed, sometimes glandular. Corolla salverform or tubular, 4–8-lobed, the lobes contorted in bud; nectary disk swollen. Stamens 4–8, inserted on corolla throat, alternate with corolla lobes; filaments distinct, very short; anthers linear, usually twisted, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, occasionally partly so, or very rarely superior, 2–celled; ovules 1 per cell on a shield-like placenta near middle of septum; style 1 or as many as carpels, terminal, slender, 2–lobed, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; pyrenes thin or thick–walled; grooved on the flat side. Seeds 1 per pyrene with well-developed oily endosperm; or endosperm occasionally scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: