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Shrubs, rarely small trees, unarmed or spinescent, deciduous or evergreen. Leaves alternate or opposite, 3-nerved from the base or pinnately-veined, the margins entire or dentate; stipules small and deciduous or corky and persistent. Inflorescences racemes or panicles, or flowers solitary, terminal and/or axillary, pedunculate. Flowers bisexual, floral tube cupulate; sepals 5(-6-8), pelatoid, adnate basally to the floral tube; petals 5(-6-8), clawed and hooded, longer than the sepals; stamens 5(-6-8), exserted; disc nectariferous, surrounding the ovary; ovary semi-inferior, 3-locular, the style 1, the stigmata 3. Fruit a drupe, mostly 3-lobed, adnate basally to the floral tube, separating at maturity into 3 pyrenes; seeds 3, smooth, wedge-shaped.
Sep inflexed, at length deciduous above the hypanthium; pet long-clawed, in bud incurved with the infolded sides of the broad blade clasping the anther, at anthesis spreading or deflexed between the sep; stamens at anthesis free and exsert; ovary 3-angled and 3-locular, immersed in the disk; style 3-lobed; fr a 3-lobed capsule-like drupe subtended by the persistent hypanthium, the exocarp thin, dark, coriaceous, the endocarp eventually loculicidally dehiscent; shrubs with alternate,3-nerved, glandular-serrate lvs and numerous small white (in our spp.) to blue fls in sessile or short-peduncled umbels aggregated into terminal or axillary pedunculate panicles. 55, N. Amer.
