Trees or shrubs, unarmed; buds flattened with stipules erect and pressed together [to conical], [sometimes with fusiform swellings housing ants in branches]. Raphides absent. Leaves opposite, sometimes with numerous foveolate domatia; stipules caducous [or rarely persistent], interpetiolar, generally ligulate, entire. Inflorescences terminal, capitate with 1-9 globose heads in fascicles or cymes, many flowered, pedunculate, bracteate; peduncles and axes articulate near middle; bracts enclosing heads involucrate and caducous; bracteoles spatulate to conical or sometimes absent. Flowers sessile, bisexual, monomorphic. Calyx limb deeply 5-lobed; lobes prolonged into a slender shaft bearing thickened to rhomboidal apical portion, this often ornamented and/or pubescent differently from shaft and frequently deciduous before shaft. Corolla pale green to white or red, salverform to narrowly funnelform, inside glabrous or glabrescent; lobes 5[or rarely 6], imbricate in bud. Stamens 5, inserted in corolla throat, partially to fully exserted; filaments short; anthers basifixed. Ovary 2-celled, ovules numerous in each cell, pendulous on axile placentas attached in upper third of septum; stigma globose to obovoid, exserted. Fruiting heads globose. Fruit capsular, obconic, septicidally then loculicidally dehiscent into 4 valves from base to apex, with valves separating from septum, with septum persistent on inflorescence or later deciduous, woody to cartilaginous, with calyx limb deciduous with capsule valves; seeds numerous, small, fusiform, flattened, winged; embryo ellipsoid, somewhat bilaterally compressed.
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