Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades unlobed. Margins entire to serrate. Pinnately veined. Petiolate. Stipules small, deciduous.

Flowers: Flowers in axillary clusters, umbels, or racemes. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual (and then plants dioecious or polygamodioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx of 4–5 sepals; sepals deltate, arising as lobes on floral tube, valvate in bud. Corolla of 0 or 4–5, green, greenish yellow, or whitish, clawed, apex notched, sides folded around a stamen. Stamens 4–5, opposite the petals; filaments distinct, adnate to base of petals. Ovary partly inferior, 2–4-celled; ovules 1 per cell, basal and erect, anatropous; style usually undivided.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; becoming black at maturity; appearing dry and 2–3–celled; containing 2–4 seed-like stones. Seeds obovoid or oblong-obovoid; not beaked; longitudinally furrowed.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: