Annual or perennial herbs, or small deciduous shrubs. Leaves alternate; leaf blade elliptic, linear, or lanceolate, herbaceous. Inflorescence usually terminal, sometimes apparently axillary, laxly racemose to capitate, without involucre. Flowers bisexual, small, 4(or 5)-merous. Calyx reddish, white, or green; tube persistent, slender, urceolate, funnel-shaped, or cylindric, contracted and articulate at apex of ovary; lobes 4, erect and slightly spreading. Petaloid appendages absent. Stamens as many as or twice as many as calyx lobes, in one or two series, opposite to calyx lobes when in one series; filaments absent; anthers oblong, included. Disk annular, oblique, sometimes tiny or absent. Ovary ± stipitate, glabrous, 1-loculed; style excentric or subterminal, short; stigma subclavate, thick. Fruit dry, enclosed by persistent calyx base; pericarp thin, glossy black.
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