Shrubs, twiggy, rhizomatous, erect, scrambling or scandent (C. parviflora, C. preissiana, C. simplicifolia, C. volubilis); short shoots present except on twining branchlets, not spinescent. Usual hair type erect uniseriate hairs with about 5 basal cells and a short, acute terminal cell less than about 0.05 mm long and rapidly caduceus; new shoots sometimes with hairs with a distinctive long base (4–6 basal cells), and/or warty with lenticels and rigid hair bases. Earliest seedling leaves apically trilobed. Adult leaves clustering or alternate, sometimes alternate on twining branchlets; leaf margin flat, recurved or canaliculate (tightly incurving); apices rounded to apiculate. Inflorescences with zygomorphic (irregular) bisexual, deep purple-blue flowers with parts (apart from the pistil) in fives; terminal (including terminal on short shoots), arranged singly or in lax corymbs, often nodding on slender peduncles; bracts and bracteoles mainly insignificant, sepaline. Sepals 5, free, spreading from base, purple-green or blue; margins incurving. Petals free, obovate, spreading from the base, margins flat, apices rounded to more acute; mostly deep blue, paler on the abaxial surface, fading with age. Stamens regularly placed initially but by anthesis the filaments are at three different heights and twisted so that the anthers appear zygomorphically aligned like the fingers in a hand, at the same height; facing the curving style at petal break (male phase). Filaments about the same length or shorter than anthers, thin, flat, basally flared, twisting, either green or purple or both; anthers oblong, gold-or straw-yellow; dehiscence either poricidal or with the cohering anther apices recurving so that the apical slits are pulled apart to act like pores; four species have anthers cohering by their cuticles past anthesis (C. brevifolia, C. filifolia, C. simplicifolia, C. telfordii). Pistil with no visible basal nectary, receptacle wider than ovary base; ovary stipitate, bilocular, placentation axile, cylindrical, hairless, green-purple; style elongated, curving, stigmatic development minimal even in female phase. Fruits are septicidally and sometimes loculicidally dehiscent, bilocular capsules; cylindrical or fusiform; initially almost flexible, glossy purple-green, becoming brown and brittle with age. Seeds with initial ovule placentation axile in two rows per loculus but by fruit maturity the seeds are intermeshed and appear in one row per chamber; seeds numerous, angular-reniform or globose, red-brown, glossy; some species known to be arillate (C. alternifolia, C. telfordii). Mature fruit characters unknown for several recently described species (C. borealis, C. telfordii).
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