Herbs, shrubs, or small trees. Leaves alternate, entire, short-petiolate, stipulate or with stipular glands. Flowers purple or blue; sepals 5, the outer 3 herbaceous, free, the inner 2 (wings) much larger, petaloid, and ? concave; petals 3, the lower (keel) not clawed, unappendaged, essentially free, the upper 2 spatulate, adnate below to the staminal sheath; stamens 8, very rarely 6, their filaments con-nate nearly to apex into a sheath split on the upper side, the anthers confluently 1-celled, opening by a large introrse-apical pore; ovary 1-locular, the style genicu-late, the stigma with 2 dissimilar lobes with the outer (lower) ? acute and the inner (upper) tubercled, the ovule 1, pendulous; disc reduced to a gland at base of the ovary. Drupe with a fleshy coat, the surface rugose, marginate, 1-seeded; seeds glabrous, exarillate, the cotyledons thick.
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