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Shrubs or trees, deciduous or evergreen, often from underground woody burl or producing thickened horizontal underground rhizomes. Buds flattened, conical or ovoid, usually with 2 large imbricate glabrous scales. Leaves spirally arranged, petiolate; leaf blade entire [toothed in United States]. Inflorescences axillary, racemose. Flowers [4-or]5[–8]-merous. Calyx with variously estivated lobes, usually valvate in bud. Corolla white [to red], tubular or urceolate; lobes short. Filaments flattened, geniculate, with or without 1 pair of spurs at anther-filament junction; anthers dehiscing by introrse-terminal elliptic pores. Ovary superior, with many ovules per locule; stigma truncate. Capsule loculicidal, with pale ± thickened sutures sometimes separating from valves in dehiscence. Seeds oblong-ovoid or spindle-shaped to shortly linear, minute, ends often truncated.
Evergreen or deciduous shrubs or rarely small trees. Leaves spirally arranged, short-petioled, entire (Mal.). Flowers 5-merous; racemes axillary or at the end of short lateral branches (Mal.). Calyx deeply (rarely 4-8-)lobed, lobes valvate. Corolla urceolate (Mal.), with short recurved lobes. Stamens 10 (rarely 8-16), included; filaments flat, dilated near the base, with a pair of appendages near the apex (Mal.); anthers ovoid, obtuse, dorsifix, awnless, opening by apical pores. Ovary 4-6-celled, globose or depressed; style columnar; stigma truncate. Disk (5-)8—12-lobed. Capsule loculicidal, dry, sutures thickened and appearing before the dehiscence as 5 rounded longitudinal ribs. Seeds ∞, small, linear-oblong, falcate, not winged, albuminous; testa loose.
Fls 5-merous; cal saucer-shaped to campanulate, deeply divided, the lobes valvate; cor globose to tubular or ovoid, the lobes short; stamens well included; filaments basally dilated, geniculate above; anthers ovate, dorsifixed, spurred but awnless, opening by 2 terminal pores; style columnar to fusiform; stigma truncate; capsule globose to truncate-ovoid, loculicidal, the sutures thickened and appearing as 5 rounded ribs; deciduous or evergreen shrubs with alternate, entire or minutely serrulate lvs; fls white to rose, on long pedicels in umbelliform lateral clusters that may be borne in the axils of the lvs or may be distributed along lfless branches to form a compound, racemiform to paniculiform infl. 35, N. Hemisphere.
