Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees, shrubs, or rarely subshrubs.

Stems: Bark sometimes with milky sap.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves compound (pinnate ± with a terminal leaflet, rarely bipinnate) or sometimes simple. Alternate. Leaflet bases somewhat oblique. Surfaces usually pubescent with simple or sometimes branched or stellate hairs or peltate scales. Margins entire or sometimes lobed or serrate. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in paniculate or occasionally racemose or spicate cymes, occasionally solitary or in pairs. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants monoecious, dioecious, or polygamous). Calyx of (2)3–5(–7) sepals; sepals imbricate or rarely valvate, usually connate at base. Corolla of 3–6(–14), distinct or sometimes connate at base, often partly adnate to staminal tube, imbricate, contorted, or occasionally valvate. Stamens (3)5–10(–23); filaments usually completely or sometimes partly connate to form a staminal tube, the tube globose, urceolate, campanulate, or cylindrical and sometimes curved or slightly inflated distally, margins entire, crenate, or toothed, sometimes bearing appendages, these distinct or partly to completely connate, as many as or 2–3(–10) times as many as stamens; anthers inserted on filaments or on margin of staminal tube, sometimes within throat of staminal tube, usually alternating with the appendages, rarely opposite them, usually in a single whorl, rarely in 2 alternating whorls, in pistillate flowers anthers smaller, indehiscent, not producing pollen. Ovary superior, (1)2–6(–13)-carpellate, with as many cells, pistillodes in staminate flowers narrower and with a more slender style and small abortive ovules, placentation axile or rarely parietal; ovules 1 to numerous per cell, anatropous, campylotropous, or orthotropous; style capitate, conical, deeply lobed, or discoid, sometimes forming an obconical receptacle for the pollen.

Fruit: Loculicidal or septicidal capsules; sometimes a berry or drupaceous; rarely a nut. Seeds either thin; with membranous wings and usually attached to a large woody columella; or unwinged; Seed coat fleshy or rarely corky or woody or with a fleshy aril; endosperm well–developed; oily; fleshy; or sometimes absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: