Unarmed shrubs or trees, glabrous or with simple hairs; twigs sometimes angled. Leaves entire, coriaceous to chartaceous, often glabrate, sometimes ap-pearing clustered at the ends of twigs; petioles mostly short; minor leaves wanting. Flowers solitary or clustered, appearing terminal, sometimes bracteate; calyx tubular to cyathiform, 5-lobed, in fruit slightly accrescent, coriaceous and splitting along one or more sides; corolla showy blue, purple or white, often fading to white or yellow, salverform, quincuncial in bud, slightly zygomorphic, the lobes rotund; stamens 5, 1 or more reduced to staminodes or wanting, didynamous, the filaments straight or slightly curved apically, often tumid near the apex, inserted along the length of the corolla tube, the anthers included; ovary ovoid on a short stipe, 2-loculed, but 1-loculed apically with many axile ovules, the stigma capitate, sometimes incurved. Fruit a globose to ovoid fleshy or coriaceous, mostly indehiscent berry; seeds large, prismatic, the embryo straight or slightly curved in fleshy endosperm.
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