Bocconia Plum. ex L.

Small trees or shrubs (or subherbaceous perennials when young) of higher elevations, the branchlets thick, coarse, often gnarled, pithy and weak; leaves simple, large, usually lobate and dentate but in some species subentire, several-ranked, usually conspicuously lighter below than above, pinnately nerved, reticu-late, varying considerably according to position on the plant; inflorescence a large, graceful panicle, terminal, subterminal, or lateral from the branchlets; bracts and bractlets small and narrow, frequently caducous; pedicels slender; flowers numer- ous, apetalous, whitish; sepals 2, usually oblong or elliptic, concave, sessile; stamens few to many, invested by the sepals, the anthers slender, the filaments short; ovary fusiform, stipitate, bearing a single basifixed ovule; style slender; stigma bilamellate, extended beyond the sepals and stamens, very conspicuous; fruit somewhat fleshy, dehiscing by 2 lateral valves opening first from the base, the replum persistent after dehiscence and fall of the seed; the single seed conspicuously arillate basally.