Peritassa Miers

Lianas, shrubs or slender trees with the upper branches scandent, glabrous throughout or nearly so. Leaves opposite, subopposite or alternate, petiolate, the petiole canaliculate. Inflorescences axillary or arising from defoliate branchlets, pedunculate, thyrsoid-paniculate, corymbose or cymose. Flowers hermaphrodite, small, subsessile or shortly pedicellate, congested or loosely arranged toward the apex of ultimate branchlets; sepals 5, narrowly imbricate, suborbicular to deltoid, erosulous or fimbriolate at the margins; petals 5, narrowly imbricate, rounded at the apex, usually erosulous at the margins, thin-carnose or submembranous; disc continuous, erect or suberect, short-cylindric, free, often crenulate at the margin, membranous to thin-carnose; stamens 3, usually erect, the filaments ligulate, the anthers extrorse, the thecae vertical or oblique, dorsally adnate to a thickened con-nective and laterally contiguous, dehiscing by longitudinal clefts, the connective sometimes produced into an apiculum; ovary usually depressed-subglobose, 3-celled, each cell 2-or 4-ovulate, the ovules collateral or somewhat superposed, attached to the interior angles near the center, sometimes one erect and the other suspended; style short, tapering, truncate, the stigmas obscure. Fruits drupaceous, small or medium-sized, the pericarp chartaceous to woody, the dissepiments soon evanescent; seeds 2-6, imbedded in mucilaginous pulp, angulate, wingless.

Use: Fruits are edible.