Chamissoa Kunth

Flowers perfect, subsessile, with 1-3 bracts subtending 1-5 bracteate fertile and 0-4 bracteate sterile flowers. Sepals 5, discrete, hypogynous, concave, greenish white, with conspicuous midribs and membranaceous margins. Stamens 5, hypogynous or perigynous, basally connate forming an exappendiculate tube shorter than, but occasionally basally fused with, the ovary; free portions of the filaments longer than the tube, usually somewhat flattened; anthers 4-locellate, introrse, medially attached. Ovary globose or ovoid, 1-locular, 1-ovulate; ovules campylotropous, the filiform arillate funicles with central basal placentae; styles 1, stigmata 2 (-3). Fruit a utricle circumscissile near the middle; seeds cochleate-orbiculate, black. Erect or clambering glabrate or pubescent herbs or shrubs. Leaves alternate, entire, petiolate or subsessile, linear-elliptic to broadly ovate, attenuate, deciduous. Inflorescences of axillary and terminal glomerules, these racemosely or paniculately disposed, with or without foliar leaves.