Ryparosa Blume

Trees or rarely shrubs, dioecious. Leaves spirally to seemingly distichously or suboppositely arranged, entire, mostly greyish-green or pallid beneath when dry, with a darker shining subtriangular spot at the upper side of the very base, tapering into the petiole, penninerved, finely papillose, glabrous or often ± densely beset with appressed, bicrural or (through reduction) simple hairs underneath, these sometimes minute (lens!); petiole longish, thickened at both ends, often curved at the apex. Stipules 0. Racemes elongated, spiciform, interrupted, solitary or 2-3 together in the axils of whether or not fallen leaves, or from thick tubercles on the stem. Flowers small. Pedicels slender. Bracts minute, subulate, subpersistent. Calyx globose, closed in bud, 3-4-lobed in anthesis, later recurved, Petals 4-5, imbricate, later recurved, densely sericeous-tomentose outside, nearly glabrous inside, at the base inside with a hairy, ovate scale half as long as the petals. ♂ Flowers: stamens 5(-4), central, episepalous, their filaments usually connate into a column, or rarely practically free and divergent; anthers ovate, extrorse. Rudiment of ovary 0. ♀ Flowers: staminodes 5(-4, or absent), alternating with the petals, free or shortly connate at the base, small, whether or not with rudimentary anthers. Ovary sessile, densely hairy, with 2-3(-4) placentas each with 1 or few ovules. Stigmas 2-5, obovate or subreniform, impressed or flat, ± bilobed, radiating, sessile and then mostly very close together (very rarely spaced), or shortly stalked and spaced, their apex flattened and ± reniform. Berry capsular, with ± coriaceous, rather thin pericarp, 1-6-seeded, mostly globose or angular corresponding to the number of seeds. Seeds globose to semiglobose or variously compressed, embedded in a little, readily drying up pulp; testa coriaceous.

In rain-forest, from the lowland to the montane zone.