Erect shrubs, evergreen, epiphytic or terrestrial; bark thin, cracking longi-tudinally. Leaves alternate, simple, estipulate, plinerved or pinnate, coriaceous, marginally entire and revolute, both surfaces usually with multicellular, red-dish or blackish, slightly sunken, glandular trichomes to 0.2 mm long, if glabres-cent appearing punctate. Inflorescence axillary, racemose or subfasciculate, usu-ally solitary, encircled at the base by a progression of bracts, the smallest bracts minute and triangular, the largest conforming to the shape and size of the in-dividual floral bracts, the inflorescence bracts few to numerous, imbricate, coriaceous, smooth or minutely striate or muricate, marginally scarious and usu-ally minutely glandular fimbriate; floral bracts solitary at base of pedicel, usually large and showy; pedicels cylindric, bibracteolate near the base or rarely mid-way up the pedicel; bracteoles chartaceous or coriaceous. Flowers with the hypanthium articulate at the pedicel, constricted at the base of the limb, the tube basally expanded or not, fused with the ovary wall, the limb erect or spreading, free from the ovary wall, 5-lobed; corolla tubular, usually carnose when fresh, 5-lobed, the lobes valvate or conduplicate valvate, usually flaring at anthesis; stamens 10, subequal or rarely unequal, subequalling the corolla, the filaments ligulate, usually distinct, rarely slightly coherent at the extreme base at anthe-sis, alternately unequal, the anthers alternately unequal, the thecae smooth or slightly granular, the tubules about the same width as the thecae and about twice as long, dehiscent by introrse, elongate clefts; ovary inferior, 5-locular, surmounted by a flat of cupuliform, nectariferous disc, the style filiform, straight or sigmoid, usually glabrous, the stigma minutely 5-lobed, truncate but slightly flaring at anthesis. Fruit a juicy, spherical, dark blue black berry; seeds many, minute, 0.5-1 mm long, the testa ruminate.
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