Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect, slender herbs, often woody at base.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades lanceolate, ovate, or oblong–ovate. Margins entire. Long-petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in lax racemes, each one subtended by a single bract and 2 bracteoles, these closely appressed to sepals. Flowers bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic. Calyx of 4 sepals, white or pink, subequal, oblong. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens 4, alternate with the sepals; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 1-carpellate; ovule 1 per carpel, placentation basal, campylotropous; style short; stigma capitate.

Fruit: Fruit an orange; red; or purple drupe. Seeds 1 per fruit; lenticular; usually pubescent; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: