Trees or shrubs, rarely climbing; branches and branchlets usually tetragonal, sometimes spiny; leaf-scars mostly large, corky, and elevated, borne on more or less prominent sterigmata. Leaves deciduous, decussate-opposite, ternate, or verticillate, rarely approximate, subopposite, or even alternate, entire or dentate, usually bearing a pair of prominent glands at the base of the blade, petiolate or sessile, the petioles rarely myrmecophilous at the apex; exstipulate. Inflorescence axillary and terminal, indeterminate, racemiform or spicate, mostly simple, occa-sionally sparsely branched, mostly elongate and many-flowered, rarely reduced to only a few flowers, erect or nutant; each subtended by a usually tiny and inconspicuous bractlet. Flowers small; calyx tubular or cyathiform, regular or somewhat zygomorphic, thin, accrescent, apically truncate and entire or 5-toothed or-lobed; corolla infundibular or hypocrateriform, mostly yellow or white, varying to blue, violet, or lilac, the tube narrow-cylindric and regular, the limb spreading, usually 5-parted, rarely 4-or 6-parted, with broad, slightly irregular lobes, the 2 hindmost outermost in prefloration, mostly more or less pubescent in the throat; stamens 4, mostly didynamous, inserted at or above the middle of the corolla-tube, included, a fifth stamen represented by a rudimentary staminode, or occasionally stamens 5 or even 6, the filaments very short, the anthers ovate or sagittate, introrse, erect, with 2 parallel thecae opening by longitudinal slits and with a thickened connective which often surpasses the thecae in length; style terminal, included, often thickened upwards, the stigma shortly bifid, ovary perfectly or imperfectly 4-celled, 2-carpellate, each cell with 1 lateral anatropous ovule. Fruit drupaceous, with a juicy exocarp and hard endocarp, the 2 pyrenes 2-celled and 2-seeded, often separated by a median fissure; the fruiting-calyx conspicuously enlarged and indurated, cupuliform or patelliform, shorter than the fruit.
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