Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees or shrubs.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Margins deeply pinnatifid, lobing variable, often on a single individual. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers numerous, in terminal or axillary racemes or panicles, bracts minute, caducous. Flowers bisexual (perfect), protandrous. Calyx splitting at first by a single slit, the segments ± coherent, the tube recurved under the limb or straight, the limb ± globose, usually oblique, the lobes coherent at the limb long after the tube has split open. Stamens 4; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits, ovate, sessile at base of limb (in the concave upper part of calyx), the connective scarcely elongated beyond anthers. Ovary superior, usually stipitate, 1-carpellate, placentation along the margin of the carpel; ovules 2, anatropous, laterally attached near middle of cell; style 1, filiform, usually long and protruding from the calyx slit on lower side of tube, accrescent during and after anthesis, ultimately becoming straight and erect, expanding at structure into an oblique or lateral, disk-like apex with a small stigma in its center.

Fruit: Follicles; usually oblique; coriaceous or woody; dehiscing along the ventral margin; rarely opening by 2 almost distinct valves. Seeds 1–2; orbicular to oblong; compressed; usually circumwinged; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: