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Evergreen shrubs or small trees, not armed, with stellate hairs often forming a tomentum, sometimes with simple hairs as well. Lvs alternate, small to large. Stipules deciduous or persistent, small. Fls small, in cymes, ☿, often aggregated to form large panicles, 5-merous, pedicellate. Calyx with triangular lobes. Petals sometimes 0, not forming a hood or enclosing anthers; claw short and narrow. Filaments bent downwards in upper part, > petals. Disc annular, inconspicuous. Ovary apparently inferior through immersion in combined calyx tube and disc, 3-celled; style 3-lobed; stigmas simple. Fr. small, capsule-like, 3-valved, loculicidal, with upper part protruding above calyx tube, dehiscing to release 3 cocci (each consisting of 1 seed and surrounding endocarp). Seed smooth, with thickened funicle widened to form a cup-shaped aril.
Fls in corymbs or panicles, bracts us. falling early; calyx adnate to ovary, of 5 triangular sepals; petals 5 or absent, clawed, attached to staminal filaments; stamens 5, upper part of filament bent sharply downward in bud. Ovary ± sunk in calyx-tube, without disk, 3-loculed, style ± divided, stigmas 3. Fr. dry, splitting to release 3 cocci, each opening on the inward side by a slit or opercular value; seeds 1 per coccus, smooth, funicle aril-like. Woody shrubs with alt. lvs, us. with stellate hairs. About 40 spp. of Australia and northern N.Z. (about half the spp. erected with very brief diagnoses by N. A. Wakefield, Vict. Nat., Melb. 68, 1951, 140-143). Of the 8 N.Z. representatives 5 are here treated as endemic spp. or vars.
