Shrubs, small trees or less often lianes of very characteristic habit, usually freely armed with paired spines (modified branches) below which is a normal node bearing a pair of leaves or a pair of very short contracted nodose branches forming spurs bearing apical fascicles of flowers and a pair of leaves, so that each node on the main stem appears to have a whorl of 4 leaves; stipules transverse or broadly triangular, adnate to the petioles, produced into a subulate tip, densely hairy inside, persistent. Cymes fasciculate, usually reduced so that flowers appear to emerge straight from the short spurs, or cymes few-flowered with short common peduncles or sometimes borne at the end of the spines; flowers small, usually many per spur, pedicellate, the buds distinctly apiculate. Calyx-tube short, ± hemispherical or depressed obconic; lobes short, linear-subulate or lanceolate, erect or spreading. Corolla usually green; tube shortly cylindrical, sometimes a little swollen at the base, hairy at the throat and with a ring of deflexed hairs inside below the throat; lobes 4–5, ovate-triangular, usually with an apiculate appendage at the apex. Stamens with very short filaments; anthers small, ± just exserted. Ovary 4–5-locular; style slender or rather thickened, always shortly exserted; stigmatic club crown-shaped or subglobose, slightly to distinctly marginally 4–5-lobed or depressed subpeltate with divaricate lobes, the lobes overtopping the middle. Fruit subglobose, rather large, on mostly accrescent pedicels, with 4–5 pyrenes and appearing 4–5-lobed in dry state and possibly slightly so in life.
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