Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs, treelets, or climbers.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite or in whorls of 3 per node. Blade ovate, elliptic-ovate, elliptic, or suborbiculate, sometimes lobed. Apex acute to obtuse. Margins entire to serrate (rarely pinnately lobed). Veins pinnate, conspicuous on lower surface. Petiolate, petiole dilated at base. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescence of terminal panicles or corymbs, with usually numerous bisexual flowers in center and few sterile flowers around outside. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants apparently functionally dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of pistillate flowers connate into an ovoid tube, adnate to ovary, the limb 5–toothed, petals small, triangular, stamens absent, urceolate. Calyx of bisexual flower inconspicuous. Calyx of sterile flowers with 3–5 sepals, enlarged, colored; other flower parts absent. Corolla of 4 or 5 petals; petals white, deciduous. Stamens 8 or 10, in a single series, opposite and alternate with the petals; filaments distinct or slightly connate at base. Ovary ± inferior, usually 3–5-celled by intrusion of parietal placentas; ovules 1 to numerous per placenta, anatropous, placentation axile or parietal; styles 3 or 4 (rarely 5), free or bases fused; stigma papillate, 4–5-lobed, formed on a fleshy ridge at apex of style.

Fruit: Fruit a somewhat hardened; globose; fleshy berry; red to maroon; whitish inside. Seeds numerous; aligned horizontally; ellipsoid; minutely beaked; the surface reticulate.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: