Trees, branches often stout, smooth, mostly glabrous. Leaves persistent or deciduous, opposite, rarely verticillate, entire or emarginate, often coriaceous, sometimes punctate, the venation pinnate, often obscure, the minor venation ob-scure; bud scales sometimes hairy; petioles mostly short, stout, sometimes con-trasting in color with the leaf and stem. Inflorescences axillary or falsely terminal, mostly short panicles or racemes, sometimes fascicles or solitary, subtended by small bracts at the dichotomies; pedicels often stout, subtended by bract-lets. Flowers perfect, 4-merous; calyx small, campanulate, the lobes deltoid or obtuse, often unequal and the outer pair overlapping in bud; corolla thick, glabrous, valvate, drying dark, urceolate, cyathiform, campanulate or rotate, the tube sometimes much reduced and the limb and lobes spheroidal, the base inside forming a flat platform or with an elevated coronule (nectary) surrounding the fertile parts; stamens 2(4), inserted on the tube, the anthers large, compressed, basifixed, subsessile, dehiscing laterally, rarely introrsely; ovary conical, glabrous, bilocular with 2 anatropous, pendulous, axile ovules in each locule, one ovule aborting, the style short or wanting, the stigma short, thick, 2-lobed. Fruits globose or pointed, stoney drupes; seeds large, the raphe ramified and conspicuous against the integument, the endosperm wanting, the cotyledons plano-convex, thick, the radicle superior, conical, short and thick.
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