Lianas. Leaves alternate, sometimes opposite towards the upper part of the branchlets, penninerved with oblique and subparallel cross-bar veins. Inflorescences paniculiform, terminal, lax, bearing a few flowers on the top of the ramifications, each of which always bears a few conduplicate or involute, linear, lanceolate or oblong bracts; these bracts are subopposite, opposite or alternate, usually perpendicular to the ramification and sometimes slightly curved upwards when young, the basal two accrescent and leafy in fruit, horizontally spreading or sometimes reflexed, slightly enlarged at their attachment (not enlarged in the extra-Mal. sp.). Flowers 5-merous, articulated at the base of the pedicel. Floral tube cylindric, shortly puberulous outside, glabrous inside. Calyx lobes puberulous on both surfaces. Petaloid appendages twice as many as calyx lobes — or the same number and then each bifid linear or oblong, membranous, entire or emarginate, inserted at the throat of the tube. Stamens included, twice as many as calyx lobes, in two series, the upper series free from the tube and inserted just below the throat, the lower series a little below the upper series, sessile, subsessile or short-filamen-tous; filaments if present slightly broadening towards the base of the anthers; anthers linear or oblong, slightly apiculate or obtuse; connectives distinct on the dorsal side and almost as broad as the two locules. Disk none or obscure, sometimes represented by some minute scales. Ovary sessile, ellipsoid or ovoid, densely hairy; style terminal, distinct; stigma oblong. Fruits ovoid or ellipsoid, prominently ribbed and reticulate (in the herbarium), surrounded at the base by the torn remains of the floral tube, with thin exocarp and hard endocarp. Seed the same shape as the fruit, testa membranous.
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