Large shrubs or small trees, glabrous or almost so. Leaves alternate, simple, sessile or shortly petiolate. Inflorescence panicle-like, broad or sometimes narrow, terminal, leafy. Flowers bisexual, slightly zygomorphic, subtended by pairs of opposite bracts. Calyx regular, campanulate, 5-lobed. Corolla campanulate, white with purple striations in throat; tube funnel-shaped to campanulate; limb 5-lobed, the lobes short and broad or long and narrow, volutive in bud. Stamens 4, sometimes 5, didynamous, inserted at base of corolla-tube; a staminode sometimes present; anthers unilocular, not cohering, dehiscing by a terminal, semicircular slit. Ovary bilocular; stigma capitate, very shortly bilobed. Fruit a succulent berry. Seeds reniform.
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