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Corolla white, yellow or red; tube cylindrical, narrowly funnel-shaped or abruptly widened to accommodate the anthers, with flattened or fine hairs at the throat and between the anthers; limb 5-lobed, lobes reduplicate in bud, spreading at maturity, often with the centre portion connate, with short hairs and often a star-shape of longer, coloured hairs above.
Calyx tube oblong, turbinate or ovoid; limb-tube small; lobes 5, usually subulate, linear, slightly spathulate or sometimes short and dentate or rounded, persistent or caducous; frequently several lobes on each inflorescence develop into a stalked white, creamy-yellow or sometimes red calycophyll (TAB. 73/A5).
Ovary 2 (rarely 3–4)-locular; ovules numerous, inserted on fleshy placentas; style slender, sometimes divided into 2 arms; stigma included or occasionally exserted; lobes 2, ± oblong to fusiform.
Anthers 5, the tips just level with the throat or inserted up to halfway down the tube, linear, attached by very short filaments near the base; connective very shortly acuminate at the apex.
Flowers usually yellow to red or sometimes white, occasionally sweet-scented, isostylous or heterostylous, borne in terminal panicles.
Fruit fleshy, indehiscent, globose, ellipsoid or oblong, sometimes crowned by the persistent calyx lobes, often lenticellate.
Leaves petiolate, blades usually elliptic with an acute or acuminate apex, pubescent or less often glabrous.
Seeds numerous, pale brown to blackish, small, usually ± flattened, the surface reticulated.
Stipules entire to completely bilobed, persistent or caducous.
Colleters usually present between the calyx lobes.
Shrubs, scandent shrubs or lianes.
