Shrubs, sometimes with paired infrastipular or superaxillary spines; branches sometimes with complex sympodial growth with reduced internodes and prophylls (Damnacanthus indicus); roots at least sometimes moniliform (i.e., nodose or "node-like constricted"). Raphides present. Leaves opposite, apparently without domatia; stipules persistent and becoming hardened or sometimes falling by fragmentation, interpetiolar or shortly united around stem, generally triangular, acute or shortly bifid to multifid. Inflorescences pseudoaxillary, superaxillary, apparently terminal, and/or paired on short shoots giving an appearance of being axillary, 1-flowered or usually cymose to fasciculate and 2-4-flowered, subsessile to apparently shortly pedunculate (i.e., borne on a leafless short shoot), bracteate with bracts usually small and glandular-fimbriate. Flowers subsessile to pedicellate and often nodding, bisexual, monomorphic or distylous. Calyx limb cupular or campanulate, 4-lobed (or 5-lobed, D. henryi). Corolla white to yellow or pale purple, tubular-funnelform, often leathery, inside densely pubescent in throat to throughout; tube rarely fenestrate (D. henryi); lobes 4 (or 5, D. henryi), valvate in bud. Stamens 4, inserted in upper part of corolla tube, included or exserted; filaments short; anthers dorsifixed. Ovary 4-celled (or 2-celled, D. henryi), ovules 1 in each cell and attached near top of septum, campylotropous; stigmas 4 (or 2, D. henryi), linear, included or exserted. Fruit red, drupaceous, globose to ellipsoid or oblate, fleshy, with calyx limb persistent; pyrenes 4(or 2, D. henryi), each with 1 seed, plano-convex, subglobose, ellipsoid, or obtusely trigonous; seeds medium-sized, subglobose to plano-convex; endosperm corneous; embryo small; radicle hypogeous.
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