Small shrubs, subshrubs, or large herbs, unarmed, often succulent; bark often soft or spongy, usually grayish white. Raphides absent. Leaves opposite, apparently without domatia, sometimes with crisped margins; stipules persistent or deciduous, interpetiolar, generally triangular, often closely densely parallel-to palmately veined, entire or shortly bilobed. Inflorescences terminal and/or pseudoaxillary, laxly cymose or usually congested-cymose to subcapitate, several to many flowered, sessile to pedunculate, bracteate with bracts usually well developed, often densely veined to stipuliform, sometimes outermost (i.e., basalmost) 4 or 6 bracts shortly fused at base into an involucre. Flowers sessile to pedicellate, bisexual, distylous. Calyx limb 5-lobed; lobes often densely parallel-veined. Corolla white or yellow, tubular to salverform, villous in throat; lobes 5, valvate in bud. Stamens 5, inserted in corolla tube, included or perhaps partially exserted; filaments short; anthers apparently dorsifixed, included. Ovary 2-celled, ovules numerous in each cell on presumably axile placentas; stigma 2-lobed with lobes linear, included or shortly exserted. Fruit white, baccate, fleshy to rather dry, ovoid to globose, with calyx limb persistent; seeds numerous, small, angled, with endosperm fleshy; embryo small; testa areolate.
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