Cuervea Triana ex Miers

Lianas or shrubs or slender trees with eventually scandent branches, glabrous throughout, the branches terete. Leaves opposite or subopposite, petiolate, stipulate. Inflorescences axillary or aggregated at the apex of branchlets or arranged on short, leafless branchlets, paniculate-corymbose, the flowers loosely arranged and com-paratively few per inflorescence, the peduncle and branchlets terete. Flowers hermaphrodite, rather large for the family, pedicellate; sepals 5, broader than long, rounded at the apex, membranous; petals 5, imbricate, spreading or suberect, mem-branous; disc continuous, erect or suberect, short-cylindric, entire or minutely crenu-late at the margin, membranous to thin-coriaceous; stamens 3, suberect, the fila-ments ligulate, conspicuously broadened toward the base, the anthers extrorsely nutant, transversely ellipsoid, dehiscing by apical, transversal, confluent clefts; pollen grains simple; ovary depressed-3-lobed, 3-celled, each cell 4-or 6-ovulate, the ovules 2-seriate, ascending from the inner basal angle; style carnose, the stigmas 3, sometimes conspicuous. Fruits of 3 capsular mericarps, these divergent, separately attached to a swollen receptacle, depressed obovoid or suborbicular, abruptly stipitate, rounded or faintly emarginate at the apex, conspicuously convex on both surfaces, dehiscing along an inconspicuous median suture and bivalved, the pericarp thin-coriaceous or p'apyraceous, flabellate-costate without, smooth or minutely rugulose within; seeds 2-6 per mericarp, thick, obovoid or ellipsoid, affixed by a basal wing, the wing oblong, gradually narrowed toward the base and distally extended into a narrow flange along the inner margin of the embryoniferous portion; cotyledons massive and united.