Cuviera Dc.

Small trees or shrubs, unarmed or sometimes spinose. Leaves opposite, often large, mostly ± oblong or elliptic, petiolate, usually coriaceous and persistent; stipules small, basally ± connate, often acuminate, deciduous. Flowers hermaphrodite or sometimes infertile (polygamo-dioecious fide Benth. & Hook.f., G.P.) in subsessile or pedunculate many-flowered axillary cymes; bracts and bracteoles linear to lanceolate or elliptic, often leafy and accrescent. Calyx-tube obconic or turbinate, sometimes 3–4-angled; lobes 3–6, linear to ovate, often leafy and accrescent, mostly longer than the corolla, persistent. Corolla funnel-shaped, campanulate or barrel-shaped, retrorsely hairy or bristly inside but throat glabrous, glabrous or pilose outside; lobes 5–6, spreading or reflexed, elongate, mostly caudate-acuminate, sometimes very markedly so. Stamens 5, inserted in the throat, the anthers exserted. Disk depressed, lobed. Ovary (1–)2–5-locular; ovules solitary in each locule, pendulous; style thick, narrowed at both ends, stiffly pubescent to glabrous, sometimes with a conspicuous globular swelling near the base (some W. African species only); stigmatic club cylindrical, mitriform or peltate, 2–10-grooved. Fruit drupaceous, often large, ovoid or subglobose, sometimes obscurely angled, with 1–5, 1-seeded pyrenes.