Pentaphylax Gardner & Champ.

Evergreen, subglabrous shrubs or trees. Twigs lengthwise grooved and ridged. Buds perular. Leaves simple, entire, penninerved, spirally arranged; midrib and petiole sulcate. Stipules absent. Flowers bisexual, actinomorphic, rather small, in ± sessile, bracteate, axillary pseudo-spikes or-racemes whether or not provided with reduced leaves at the apex and later terminating into a foliate twig, flowering from the base upwards; exceptionally some flowers or some inflorescences in twos, the upper flower expanding first. Bracteoles 2, appressed to the calyx, persistent, ± carinate, ciliate. Sepals 5, slightly unequal, roundish, imbricate, ciliate, persistent, sometimes splitting (retuse) later. Petals 5, white, thickish, obovate-oblong, rounded or shallowly emarginate, imbricate in bud, free but coherent mutually and with the stamens, dropping often together. Stamens 5, basifixed, inflexed in bud, later erect, alternating with the petals and shorter than these; filaments thickish, flattened in the middle, narrowed towards the anther; anther-cells 2, free, roundish, each cell with a minute appendage representing a terminal pore. Disk absent. Ovary superior, 5-celled, ovate. Ovules 2 in each cell, collateral, pendent, attached at the inner angle, feebly campylotropous, apotropous, with 2 teguments and a dorsal raphe. Style 1, long-persistent, cylindric; stigma broadened, feebly or distinctly star-shaped by 5 acute, minute to distinct stigmatic arms. Capsule ellipsoid, loculicidally dehiscent in the upper half or down to the base, valves long persistent, each bearing a septum along the middle; exocarp either freed and withering or disruptured along the midrib of the carpels, midribs persistent, representing 5 additional narrow 'valves'; endocarp and septa woody, after dehiscence leaving a persistent, ± 5-angular columella. Endocarp and seedcoat showing a peculiar transverse-fibrous tissue. Seeds elongated, resembling thin, narrow lemon-sectors, sometimes thin above (in the basal part) so as to appear seemingly ± winged, but sometimes appearing to be empty. Embryo horse-shoe-shaped; radicle terete; albumen scarce.

Rain-forests and subalpine brushwood, in Malaysia and Indo-China exclusively above 1200 m altitude.

Uses. Sometimes cultivated for ornamental purposes.