Alyxia Banks ex R.Br.

Climbers, scramblers or shrubs. Branches sometimes with large corky protuberances. Leaves opposite or in whorls of 3-7, more or less equal in size within a whorl but often of extremely different sizes and shapes on different parts of the plant; colleters present in the axils. Inflorescences axillary and/or terminal, consisting of solitary flowers, of simple pleiochasia, or of compound pleiochasia and then sometimes forming large terminal panicles; flowers 5-merous (but see Alyxia kabaenae). Sepals ovate to linear; colleters absent. Corolla lobes sinistrorse; tube cylindrical, somewhat inflated around stamens; lobes erect, spreading or reflexed. Stamens inserted mostly in the upper half of the corolla tube, more rarely around or just beneath the middle, not exserted from corolla throat; filaments straight, short and thin; anthers ovate, fertile for most of the length; free from style head. Disk absent. Gynoecium 2-carpellate, apocarpous but apically united into a common style; glabrous to pubescent; style filiform; style head small. Ovules several. Fruit a pair of drupes from each flower, very frequently with one aborted, consisting of one or more articles with one seed in each article, when more than one then forming a moniliform chain; articles globose or ellipsoid (in Malesia); endocarp thin and papery, sometimes somewhat thicker to quite tough, mesocarp fleshy, often very thinly so; pericarp thin and coloured. Seeds simple; endosperm ruminate (or with longitudinal ridges outside Malesia). Embryo with flat to strongly undulate cotyledons.