Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, suffrutescent herbs, vines, shrubs or small trees.

Stems: Young branches and lower leaf surface densely covered with appressed, silvery scales.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite, decussate. Lower surfaces densely covered with appressed, silvery scales. 3–7-veined. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in lateral or terminal, multiflowered cymes or panicles, usually bracteolate. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Hypanthium tubular, or subcylindrical to narrowly campanulate, variously pubescent to glabrate. Calyx truncate or lobes broadly rounded and inconspicuous, persistent. Corolla of 4–5(6) petals, white to pink, often drying yellow, narrowly obovate–oblong. Stamens twice as many as petals, all similar; anthers linear–subulate, with a dorsally inclined pore, connective not prolonged below anther sacs and without appendages. Ovary partly to completely inferior, 3- or 5-celled, glabrous; ovules numerous, placentation axile; style simple; stigma terminal and capitate.

Fruit: Berries bluish-black; fleshy; many-seeded; ovoid to subglobose; crowned by the persistent flange-like calyx. Seeds ovoid to pyramidal; granular to papillose; endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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