Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees or shrubs, ± with unicellular or multicellular hairs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, occasionally alternate, or rarely whorled. Surfaces glandular punctate or with embedded or inconspicuous glands; blades usually coriaceous or leathery. Margins entire. Often with a continuous submarginal vein. Usually petiolate. Stipules vestigial or absent.

Flowers: Flowers in various types of terminal, axillary, or cauliflorous inflorescences, sometimes solitary. Flowers often pollinated by nectar–feeding birds, bisexual (perfect) or rarely unisexual, actinomorphic. hypanthium well–developed above ovary, usually nectariferous. Calyx of (3)4–5(6) sepals; sepals usually imbricate, occasionally connate in bud and splitting irregularly or deciduous as a calyptra, sometimes essentially absent. Corolla of (3)4–5(6), imbricate or coherent into a calyptra, occasionally absent. Stamens usually numerous or occasionally only 1–2 times as many as sepals and petals, borne on margins or adaxial surface of hypanthium rim or on a flat nectary disk surrounding the style at apex of ovary; filaments distinct or basally connate into 4–5 bundles; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits or occasionally by terminal pores, connective usually with an apical secretory cavity. Ovary inferior or partly inferior, (1)2–12(–16)-carpellate, placentation axile; ovules 2 to numerous per cell, anatropous or campylotropous; style 1 or rarely stigma sessile; stigma capitate or rarely lobed.

Fruit: Berries; drupes; loculicidal capsules; or nuts. Seeds without endosperm or endosperm sparse and thin; seed coat cartilaginous or thinly membranous; sometimes absent; embryo straight or curved.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: