Shrubs or small trees, unarmed; branches usually longitudinally ridged on each side and surrounded at base by persistent leafless stipules, with bark often yellowed and hardened. Raphides present. Leaves opposite, decussate on ascending branches and distichous on horizontal branches, without domatia; stipules persistent at least on younger nodes, interpetiolar, bilobed, often becoming hardened with age. Inflorescences terminal on principal branches, or terminal on axillary short shoots and apparently axillary, umbelliform to fasciculate and several flowered or reduced to 1 flower, sessile to pedunculate, bracteate with bracts usually reduced. Flowers pedicellate or sessile, bisexual, usually distylous [occasionally fused by their ovaries]. Calyx limb truncate or 4 or 5(or 6)-lobed, with lobes infrequently unequal with 1 larger than others. Corolla white, salverform, inside glabrous; lobes (4 or)5(or 6), valvate in bud. Stamens (4 or)5(or 6), inserted at or above middle of corolla tube, included in long-styled flowers or partially exserted in short-styled flowers; filaments short; anthers dorsifixed. Ovary 2-celled, ovules 1(or 2) in each cell, on axile placentas attached near or above middle of septum; stigma 2-lobed, exserted in long-styled flowers, included in short-styled flowers. Infructescences occasionally displaced to pseudoaxillary by subsequent branch growth. Fruit simple [or infrequently multiple], purple-black to blue-black, drupaceous, fleshy, subglobose or globose, with calyx limb persistent; pyrenes 1 or 2, 1-celled, subglobose when solitary to plano-convex when paired, thin-walled, with membranous preformed germination slits; seeds medium-sized, subglobose to plano-convex, on ventral face with deeply concave hilum; testa membranous; endosperm corneous; embryo small, with hypocotyl; radicle hypogynous.
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