Psydrax Gaertn.

Trees, shrubs, scandent shrubs or sometimes lianes. Leaves mostly evergreen but sometimes deciduous and restricted to apex of branches, paired or rarely ternate, petiolate or sometimes subsessile; blades typically coriaceous but less often chartaceous, glabrous or sometimes pubescent; domatia glabrous or pubescent or sometimes absent; stipules usually with a truncate base bearing a decurrent, slightly to very strongly keeled, sometimes foliaceous lobe or, less often, lanceolate to ovate and soon caducous, never with silky white hairs inside. Flowers 4–5-merous, borne in sessile to pedunculate umbellate cymes, in pedunculate clearly branched cymes or very rarely solitary; bracts and bracteoles typically inconspicuous or occasionally conspicuous or sometimes (not in Africa) entirely enclosing developing inflorescence and eventually rupturing into 2 or more segments. Calyx-tube broadly ellipsoid to almost hemispherical; limb a truncate to dentate rim, occasionally equalling the tube in length but often much shorter. Corolla white to yellow; tube broadly cylindrical, mostly equal to the lobes in length or somewhat longer or shorter, inside usually with a ring of deflexed hairs or sometimes with hairs not restricted to a well-defined ring or absent, often pubescent at throat; lobes reflexed, often thickened towards apex and obtuse to acute, rarely acuminate-apiculate, very rarely apiculate. Stamens set at corolla throat; filaments well developed; anthers lanceolate to narrowly ovate, attached shortly above base, reflexed. Style long, slender, always exceeding corolla-tube, glabrous, sometimes narrowing at apex; stigmatic knob cylindrical, always longer than wide, occasionally flaired or somewhat narrowed at base, hollow to about mid-point, bifid or rarely deeply cleft at apex when mature; ovary 2-locular, each locule containing 1 ovule, attached to the upper 1/3 of the septum. Disk glabrous or pubescent. Fruit a 2-seeded drupe, small (or sometimes large in India) ellipsoid to didymous; pyrenes cartilaginous to woody, ± ellipsoid and flattened on ventral face or laterally flattened-spherical, usually with a very shallow crest extending from point of attachment around apex which eventually splits and with grooves from point of attachment extending to lateral faces, scarcely bullate, rugulose or deeply furrowed. Seeds with endosperm entire; testa very finely reticulate; embryo almost straight or curved to a C-shape (according to the pyrene shape); radicle erect; cotyledons small, parallel to ventral face of seed. Figs. 131/15, 17, 24, p. 752 & 132/23, p. 754.