Glabrate shrubs or small trees; wood brittle. Leaves mostly alternate or pseu-doverticillate, entire, spinulose tipped, mostly coriaceous and rigid, short petio-late; stipules acicular, or wanting. Inflorescences short racemes or rarely solitary flowers, mostly terminal or nearly so; stipuliform bracts sometimes present; brac-teoles wanting. Flowers mostly perfect, 5-merous, either white or orange; calyx with sepals free or basally connate, imbricate, rotund, sometimes ciliate or cren-ate; corolla salverform, the tube straight, campanulate or urceolate, the lobes imbricate, rotund, thick but thinning at the margins; staminodes 5, resembling the corolla lobes, connate to the top of corolla tube but free above, sometimes dorsally appendaged; the filaments flat, narrowing upwards, basally connate into a tube which is basally adnate to the corolla tube, the anthers ovate, pointed, exserted, the thecae separated dorsally, longitudinally dehiscent, nearly basi-fixed; ovary conical unilocular, the ovules many, the style not demarcated from the ovary, the stigma peltate, entire or minutely lobed. Fruit a coriaceous berry, ovoid, elliptical or globose, sometimes cuspidate, the pericarp thick; seeds large, 1-numerous, immersed in a spongey or mucilaginous pulp.
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