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Shrubs, subshrubs, or rarely herbs or creeping herbs, unarmed; pubescence of many-celled, simple or 2-to many-branched hairs. Leaves solitary, paired, or sometimes unequal paired; leaf blade entire. Inflorescences 1-10-flowered fascicles in leaf axils; peduncle obsolete or absent. Flowers actinomorphic, 5-or rarely 4-merous, pedicellate. Calyx cup-shaped, truncate, often with 5-10 subapical teeth; teeth linear-subulate or umbonate, equal or not. Corolla white or purple-blue, rotate or stellate, shallowly or deeply divided. Stamens inserted at apex of corolla tube; filaments short, equal; anthers elliptic dehiscing by oblique apical pores. Ovary 2-locular; ovules numerous. Style glabrous. Fruit a red or red-purple berry, globose. Seeds small, numerous, deltate, deltate-reniform, or lenticular, finely reticulate.
Herbs, shrubs or vines, mostly unarmed, glabrous or pubescent with various types of hairs.4 Leaves simple, entire or nearly so; minor leaves often present. Inflorescences solitary or fascicled in the leaf axils, few to many-flowered. Flowers with the calyx campanulate or cyathiform, apically truncate, 10-ribbed, the ribs giving rise to 0-10 teeth lateral on the calyx wall near the summit of the calyx, the teeth mostly 5 or 10, when 10 then often appearing in 2 series, not splitting at the sinuses in flower or fruit; corolla rotate, 5-lobed to various depths, the interplicate area sometimes thickened; stamens mostly 5, equal or unequal,
the filaments inserted on the short corolla tube, the anthers elongate, opening by small terminal pores, sometimes connate, rarely pubescent; ovary 2-loculed, the ovules few to many on proliferated placentae. Fruit a dry, pulpy or juicy berry, globose, ovate, or pyriform, not enclosed in the sometimes enlarged calyx; seeds compressed-discoid, the embryo circinnate around the periphery of the seed, the endosperm fleshy.
