Small shrubs, usually much branched, unarmed, fetid when bruised, usually with short shoots. Raphides present. Leaves opposite but often crowded and apparently verticillate, decussate, without domatia; stipules persistent, interpetiolar and often fused to petioles, generally triangular to truncate, with 1-8 bristles. Inflorescences terminal on principal stems and/or terminal on axillary short shoots and apparently axillary, capitate and several flowered or reduced to 1 flower, sessile, bracteate. Flowers sessile or subsessile, bisexual, distylous. Calyx limb 4-6-lobed essentially to base. Corolla white to pink, funnelform or tubular-funnelform, inside villous in tube; lobes 4-6, valvate-induplicate in bud, with margins sometimes crisped. Stamens 4-6, inserted in upper part of corolla tube, included or exserted; filaments short to developed, anthers dorsifixed near base. Ovary 2-celled, ovules 1 in each cell, erect, basal; stigma 2-lobed, included or exserted. Fruit drupaceous or tardily capsular, obconic to obovoid, leathery to apparently dry, tardily dehiscent septicidally then loculicidally across top, with calyx limb persistent and often enlarging and becoming spiny; pyrenes 2, 1-celled, each with 1 seed, oblong to obovoid, longitudinally densely ridged.
Home