Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees or shrubs, sometimes scandent, or lianas.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite. Margins entire. Stipules interpetiolar, deltoid to ovate or lanceolate, lacking adaxial indument, usually bearing mucilate-producing colleters on inner surface that aid in protection of the growing shoot tip.

Flowers: Flowers in inflorescences sessile or pedunculate umbellate or clearly branched cymes, flowers 4- or 5-merous, rarely solitary, the bracts and bracteoles usually inconspicuous; hypanthium broadly ellipsoid to nearly hemispherical. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or unisexual; insect-pollinated, often heterostylous. Calyx limb truncate to dentate, 4-5-lobed with open aestivation, usually shorter than hypanthium, lobes usually small, rudimentary, or absent. Corolla tube broadly cylindric, often with deflexed hairs within and pubescent at throat, the lobes reflexed, subequal to tube in length or longer or shorter, often thickened toward apex, valvate, imbricate, or convolute, usually obtuse to acute; nectary disk usually present. Stamens as many as and alternate with the corolla lobes, attached in corolla throat; the filaments well developed, the anthers dorsifixed near base, lanceolate to narrowly ovate, usually reflexed, dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary inferior, 2-locular; ovules solitary in each locule, attached to the upper 1/3 of septum; style slender, longer than corolla tube, glabrous, sometimes narrowing at apex, 1 or as many as carpels, terminal, the stigmatic knob cylindric, longer than broad, hollow to about the middle, bifid or deeply cleft at apex when mature; stigmas lobed or capitate, dry or occasionally wet.

Fruit: Drupes 2-seeded; ellipsoid to didymous; the pyrenes cartilaginous to woody; rugulose to deeply furrowed; with a shallow apical cleft. Seeds with entire endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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