Description

Key Characters:

Growth Form: Shrubs or small trees, usually evergreen.

Stems:

Roots:

Leaves: Leaves simple. Alternate or rarely opposite. Petiolate (rarely sessile). Stipules small and caducous or absent.

Flowers: Flowers in small axillary cymes, sometimes in axillary racemes, panicles, or solitary. Flowers usually unisexual (and the plants dioecious), actinomorphic. Calyx usually of 4, sometimes 5–6(–10) sepals; sepals small, imbricate and usually connate at the base. Petals usually as many as sepals, connate at base in Ilex, distinct in other genera. Stamens usually as many as and alternate with the petals or sometimes more numerous, adnate to the petals in Ilex, often represented as staminodes in pistillate flowers; anthers usually dithecal, opening by longitudinal slits. Ovary superior, (2–)4–6(–24)-carpellate, carpels connate, with as many cells; ovules 1(2) per cell, on axile placentas and pendulous, usually anatropous; style terminal, sometimes absent; stigma lobed or capitate.

Fruit: Fruit drupaceous; with as many 1–seeded pyrenes as carpels. Seeds with abundant oily or proteinaceous endosperm.

Ploidy:

Habitat:

Elevation Range: