Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees or shrubs 1–12 m tall.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades obovate to ovate. Apex acute or obtuse. Base rounded. Surfaces glabrous or pubescent; blades membranous to stiffly coriaceous. Margins entire to slightly wavy and with pronounced marginal ribs. Petioles with narrow, opposite wings. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in single axillary panicles, these 1–2 branched, reddish brown pubescent or glabrous. Each panicle branch subtended by an ovate to triangular, scarious bract, or 1 bract and 2 smaller, but similar, lateral bracteoles. Gynodioecious (with bisexual (perfect)–flowered plants and female plants in each population). flowers 5–100 per branch, each on a very short pedicel, subtended by a scarious bract and 2 alternate bracteoles on the pedicel. Calyx of 5 sepals, distinct, imbricate, subequal. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens and staminodes 5; filaments connate at base to form a short, membranous tube with short, rounded flaps of tissue alternating with the filaments; anthers exserted at anthesis. Ovary superior, globose or urceolate, 1.5–2 mm long; style absent or very short; stigmas 2, straight or recurved, nearly as long as the ovary, with glands on the inner surface.

Fruit: Indehiscent utricle. Seeds black and shiny; lenticular 1–1.5 mm long.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: