Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees.

Stems: Young branches terete (cylindrical), glabrous, terminal and axillary buds covered with bracts, forming a small cone, young branches with clusters of scars from fallen bracts.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades broadly ovate, 7–10 cm long, 3–5 cm wide. Apex sharply acute. Surfaces glabrous; hairs, when present, simple; blades usually leathery, usually with aromatic oil or mucilage cells. Margins entire. Tripliveined, with domatia in axils of main veins. Petioles slender, relatively long (± ⅓ length of lamina). Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary, glabrous inflorescences shorter than leaves. Flowers usually bisexual (perfect), usually aromatic, small, actinomorphic. Tepals 6, 1.5–2 mm long, glabrous externally, pubescent within, basal part of or entire Tepals usually persisting on rim of cupule, usually arranged in whorls of 3, usually white, greenish white, or yellow, rarely reddish. Fertile stamens 9, outer 6 introrse, inner 3 extrorse and with basal glands, staminodia and filaments pubescent; anthers tetrathecal. Ovary superior, 1-celled; ovule 1, anatropous.

Fruit: Globose berry; subtended by a small cupule with entire margins; which can be shallow or completely envelop the fruit. Seeds without endosperm.

Ploidy: 2n = 24

Habitat:

Elevation Range: