Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees, rarely large trees, evergreen.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blade leathery to thinly leathery. Margins serrate, serrulate, or rarely entire. Petiolate or rarely sessile and amplexicaul. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers axillary or subterminal, solitary or rarely to 3 in a cluster. In C. subg. Thea, flowers clearly pedicellate; bracteoles differentiated from sepals, 2-10, spirally arranged, persistent or caducous; sepals 5(or 6), persistent, distinct or basally connate. In C. subg. Camellia, flowers apparently sessile, actually with a short stout pedicel completely covered by bracteoles and sepals at anthesis; bracteoles and sepals not differentiated, ca. 10, caducous or persistent. Petals 5-8(-12), white, red, or yellow, basally ± connate. Stamens numerous, in 2-6 whorls; outer filament whorl basally ± connate into a tube and adnate to petals; anthers dorsifixed, 2-loculed, longitudinally and laterally cleft. Ovary superior, 3-5-loculed; ovule placentation axile.

Fruit: Capsules globose or oblate; 3-5-loculed; sometimes reduced to 1- or 2-loculed by abortion; loculicidal into (1-)3-5 valves from apex; columella persistent or lacking. Seeds globose; semiglobose; or polygonal; seed coat hornlike; hilum umbilicate; cotyledons full and fleshy with high oil content; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: