Home
Characters in Australia as for the family:Small shrubs with simple and stellate indumentum. Leaves simple, opposite. Flowers bisexual, almost actinomorphic, in cymes or solitary. Sepals 5, free, unequal. Petals 5, free, convolute in bud, caducous. Stamens numerous, on a hypogynous disc; anthers versatile, bilocular, opening by slits. Ovary superior, 1-locular, 3–10–carpellate; placentation parietal, usually intruding into ovary; ovules several, orthotropous; style simple. Fruit a loculicidal capsule. Seeds with endosperm; embryo curved.
Aromatic, evergreen shrubs. Lvs opposite, exstipulate; petioles often connate at base. Fls mostly in simple or compound terminal cymes. Bracts often large, sometimes foliose. Petals 5, mostly > 1 cm long, crumpled in bud, white or pink to purplish, often with dark blotch at base. Ovary appearing 5-(10)-locular and placentation appearing axile because of well-developed septae; style short to long; stigma large, 5-10-lobed; ovules on filiform funicles. Capsule usually 5-valved, closely invested by calyx, woody. Embryo circinate.
