Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Erect perennial herbs or shrubs, often somewhat succulent.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate. Blades usually ovate to lanceolate. Apex acute to acuminate, mucronate. Margins entire. Petiolate. Stipules absent.

Flowers: Flowers in racemes or spikes, terminal or pseudoaxillary, often pubescent, each flower subtended by a single bract and 2 bracteoles. Flowers bisexual (perfect) or sometimes unisexual (and then plants dioecious), usually actinomorphic. Calyx of (4)5(–9) sepals; sepals white to red, somewhat unequal, oblong to elliptic, oblanceolate, or ovate. Corolla (petals) absent. Stamens (6)7–25, in 1–2 irregular whorls, often on a hypogynous disk; filaments sometimes widened at base; anthers dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, 5–16-carpellate, the carpels connate throughout, depressed–globose, placentation basal; ovule 1 per carpel, campylotropous; styles as many as carpels.

Fruit: Berries depressed–globose; longitudinally 5–10(–16)–grooved. Seeds 5–16; ellipsoid; base unequal; laterally compressed; the surface glossy black; true endosperm absent.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

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