Monodora Dunal

Trees or shrubs, sometimes climbing or scrambling, glabrous or with simple hairs; young stems often glaucous, frequently drying black as do the young leaves. Flowers hermaphrodite, solitary or less often in 2–few-flowered cymes, terminal or extra-axillary or on shoots from which leaves have fallen, pedicellate, sometimes very conspicuously so; bracteole single, often large and leafy, usually amplexicaul, persistent. Sepals 3, valvate, free, shorter than the petals. Petals 6 in 2 whorls of 3, both valvate, unequal, all united at the base, very often with markedly crisped or undulate margins, the outer broad at the base, usually spreading or curved, inner ± clawed, often with the apices connivent at the tips until flower is very mature. Stamens numerous, oblong, cuneiform or almost globose; filaments absent; anther-cells extrorse; connective-prolongation thickened. Carpels several, united into a conical or globose 1-celled ovary with numerous ovules and parietal placentation; stigmas sessile, radiating. Fruit syncarpous, globose, ellipsoid or obovoid, with numerous seeds and leathery or woody pericarp. Seeds irregularly arranged, mostly shining brown; aril absent.