Herbs or shrubs, mostly freely branched. Leaves petioled, alternate, or the lower opposite, simple. Flowers-solitary, small, pedicelled, in upper axils of sometimes much reduced leaves. Floral tube inconspicuous. Sepals 4, mostly red, narrow. Petals 4, dissimilar, white to rose, the 2 upper unguiculate, with none, one, or two glands at apex of claw; the 2 lower clawed and curved upward, glandless. Stamens 2, adnate to the style and connate with each other at the base, the posterior fertile, the anterior sterile, petaloid. Ovary 4-loculed; style short, filiform, with slightly enlarged and barely lobed stigma; ovules multiseriate, many. Capsule globose to clavate, coriaceous, 4-loculed and-valved. Seeds many, obovoid, granulate.
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