Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Trees.

Stems: Stems supported by numerous branched stilt roots, the taproot abortive.

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Opposite and decussate (pairs of leaves alternating 90 degrees between nodes). Apex with a caducous mucro. Surfaces glabrous, coriaceous; lower surfaces usually black–dotted. Margins entire. Petiolate. Stipules usually red when fresh, lanceolate.

Flowers: Flowers in unbranched or 2–3–branched, pedunculate cymes. Flowers bisexual (perfect). Calyx deeply 4-lobed, coriaceous, accrescent and becoming reflexed in fruit, surrounded at base by cup-shaped bracteoles. Corolla of 4 petals, lanceolate, entire, caducous. Stamens 8–16, sessile or with very short filaments; anthers multicelled, opening by a large ventral valve. Ovary partly superior, 2-celled; ovules 2 per cell; stigma entire or obscurely 2-lobed.

Fruit: Fruit ovoid; the surface granular or roughened. Seeds 1(–3); cotyledons connate into a fleshy body continuous with; but distinguishable from; the hypocotyl; which is clavate; elongate; protruding from Seeds in old fruit; perforating apex of fruit and falling out.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: