Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Deciduous or sometimes evergreen shrubs or small trees, ± thorny; densely lepidote or stellate pubescent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Lower surfaces of leaves densely lepidote, the scales peltate and ciliate or stellate. Margins entire. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers solitary or in umbels in the leaf axils. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or sometimes unisexual (and then plants dioecious or polygamodioecious), actinomorphic; often fragrant, bisexual (perfect). Calyx of (2)4(6) sepals; sepals often petaloid, appearing as lobes on a tubular hypanthium in pistillate flowers or saucer-shaped in staminate flowers. Calyx white or yellow within, 4-lobed, deciduous. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 4, inserted on mouth of hypanthium; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary partly inferior, carpel 1; ovule 1, basal, anatropous; style slender; stigma linear to capitate.

Fruit: Dry achenes; but appearing drupaceous or berry-like; enclosed by persistent base of hypanthium; which becomes fleshy. Seeds 1 per fruit; endosperm scanty or absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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