Carphalea Juss.

Small shrubs with erect branched stems. Leaves paired or in whorls of 3, petiolate. Stipules with (1–)3–5 linear or filiform colleter-tipped setae from a short base. Flowers medium-sized, hermaphrodite, dimorphic, some flowers with anthers included and style exserted and others completely vice versa, in rather dense few-many-flowered terminal inflorescences. Calyx-tube narrowly obconic or turbinate, ribbed; limb variously deeply 4–5-lobed or, in sect. Dirichletia, eccentrically elliptic, the tube ± placed at one of the foci, sometimes shallowly 3–4-lobed. Corolla-tube very narrowly cylindrical; lobes 4–5, oblong or ovate; throat densely hairy. Ovary 2–3-locular, each locule with a slender basal placenta bearing ± (3–)4–6 ovules; style filiform, the stigma divided into 2(–4) filiform lobes. Fruit obconic, sometimes curved, of bony texture, strongly ribbed, the ribs running out into the strongly nervose accrescent calyx-limb or lobes, apparently always indehiscent, 1–2-seeded. Seeds narrowly oblong-obconic.