Shrubs to quite large trees; often armed with a spine below each node. Leaves opposite or subopposite, mostly palmately 3-5-foliolate, often with a slightly winged petiole. Inflorescence a single flower or fascicle of 2-3 flowers, usually borne cauliflorously on the old wood or trunk, sometimes terminally. Flowers with the calyx spathaceous, split ventrally to near its base, inconspicu-ously lepidote; corolla white or greenish-white, large, broadly campanulate to infundibuliform, usually with a transverse fold across the lower side of the throat; stamens subexserted, anthers glabrous, the thecae thick, straight, some-what divergent; pollen grains 3-colpate, the exine finely granular; ovary cylin-drical, the epidermis glandular and appearing more or less lepidote when dry, the ovules multiseriate; disc annular-pulvinate. Fruit elongate-linear to oblong, indehiscent, often longitudinally ridged, with a firm, fleshy outer cortex and a fibrous-fleshy core; seeds between cortex and coxe, small, flattened, encircled by a narrow vestigial wing.
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