Shrubs or small trees, erect to clambering or perhaps scandent, usually armed with paired, ascending, straight to slightly curved, axillary thorns, often with short shoots. Raphides absent. Leaves opposite or sometimes congested to apparently fascicled on lateral short shoots, usually with domatia; stipules caducous, interpetiolar or shortly united around stem, generally triangular, acute to cuspidate. Inflorescences terminal on lateral branches and/or short shoots, 1-flowered or 2-to several flowered and fasciculate to cymose, sessile to pedunculate, bracteate or bracts reduced. Flowers pedicellate, bisexual, monomorphic. Calyx limb 5-lobed, usually with well-developed basal tubular portion. Corolla white to yellow, salverform, usually pubescent in throat; lobes 5, convolute in bud, usually spreading to reflexed. Stamens 5, inserted in corolla throat, partially to fully exserted; filaments short; anthers dorsifixed. Ovary 2-celled, ovules several to many in each cell on axile placentas; stigma clavate to fusiform or 2-lobed with lobes coherent, included to partially exserted. Fruiting pedicels sometimes elongating. Fruit purplish black, baccate, fleshy to leathery or infrequently woody, globose to ellipsoid, smooth, with calyx limb tardily deciduous; seeds several to numerous, medium-sized, angled or ellipsoid, embedded in pulp; testa weakly areolate.
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