Shrubs or trees without tendrils; branchlets usually hollow, at least in part, often inflated, perforated, and inhabited by ants, pubescent or glabrescent. Leaves alternate or subdistichous, not lobed, elliptic to lanceolate, usually leathery, subsessile or petiole short, often shortly winged, decurrent on the branchlets or not; margin finely crenulate to subentire, set with many small glands; nerves pinnate; stipules small, caducous. Inflorescences axillary, sessile, up to 4-flowered fascicles, or horseshoe-shaped, 4–9-flowered, or flowers solitary; bracts numerous, imbricate, brown. Flowers sessile, hermaphrodite, large, fragrant; hypanthium thickish, shallowly cup-shaped. Sepals 5, large, imbricate, free. Petals 5, imbricate, resembling the sepals. Corona double, the outer membranous, tubiform, straight or ± folded, with laciniate edge, the inner low, fleshy, with shallowly lobed edge. Stamens many, nearly hypogynous, ± arranged in 2 rows; filaments united into a tube for the lower one-fourth to half; anthers oblong-linear, 2-thecous, sub-basifixed. Ovary sessile, placentas 3–4, many-ovuled; style single, conspicuous, thick, intruding in the stigma; stigma large, variable in shape, hemi-globose to obtuse-conical, smooth, entire or distally ± (3–)4-lobed, or rarely distinctly 4-lobed, often larger than the ovary. Fruit coriaceous, ? indehiscent but showing (3–)4 valve-sutures, subglobose, subsessile. Seeds many, ovoid, ± flattened, ± 5 mm., arillate; testa crustaceous, scrobiculate.
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