Perebea Aubl.

Dioecious trees. Leaves alternate, distichous, entire to rather obscurely undulate-serrate toward the tip; stipules fully amplexicaul. Inflorescences axillary, solitary or clustered, involucrate, discoid. Staminate flowers: tepals 4, free or more or less united; stamens 4, nearly included, the anthers broadly oval. Pistillate flowers numerous and all fertile; tepals 4, free or somewhat united, accrescent and somewhat pulpy in fruit but essentially free and united only at the base; ovary superior to subinferior, the style central, the 2 stigma lobes short and broad to narrow and filiform. Fruit a more or less fleshy, weakly united syncarp. Perhaps 4-6 species from Costa Rica to Brazil and Bolivia. Of the related South American genera may be mentioned Helicostylis, which differs from Perebea in the exinvolucrate inflorescences, the pistillate being most peculiar in having only one or very few of the epigynous central flowers fertile and the peripheral flowers reduced to a sort of enveloping involucre composed of the accrescent fleshy sterile perianths.