Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or trees.

Stems: Stems and branches with very strong, tough, often shiny fibers.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or opposite. Blades herbaceous or coriaceous. Margins entire. Pinnately veined. Sessile or short–petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in terminal or axillary, spicate, racemose, or capitate, sessile or pedunculate inflorescences, rarely with deciduous tracts. Flowers bisexual (perfect), polygamous, or unisexual, actinomorphic; sweetly scented at night. Calyx (3)4–5(6)-lobed, tubular or funnelform, sometimes articulated above the ovary, the lobes usually imbricate. Corolla of as many or twice as many petals as calyx lobes; petals small and often scale-like, usually not petaloid, or absent. Stamens as many or twice as many as the calyx lobes, in 2 distinct whorls. Ovary superior, 2–5(–12)-carpellate, with as many cells, or when 2-carpellate, pseudomonomerous and 1-celled; ovules solitary and pendulous in each cell, anatropous to hemitropous; style filiform, ± excentric; stigma usually capitate, papillate.

Fruit: Fruit usually indehiscent; fleshy or dry; rarely a loculicidal capsules; often enclosed in portions of the persistent calyx tube. Seeds usually with a caruncle-like appendage; outer coat usually crustaceous; embryo straight; endosperm usually scanty.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: