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Shrubs or trees, unarmed, often drying blackened. Raphides absent. Leaves opposite, sometimes with domatia; stipules persistent or occasionally tardily deciduous, interpetiolar or united around stem, triangular, often aristate. Inflorescences terminal, sometimes displaced to pseudoaxillary by subsequent growth, cymose to corymbiform, few to many flowered, sessile or pedunculate, bracteate or bracts reduced. Flowers pedicellate or sessile, bisexual, monomorphic, often fragrant. Calyx limb 5-lobed. Corolla white, pale green, or yellow, funnelform or salverform, inside glabrous or pubescent in throat; lobes 5, convolute in bud, usually strongly reflexed at anthesis. Stamens 5, inserted in corolla throat, exserted; filaments short or reduced; anthers dorsifixed. Ovary 2-celled, ovules 1 to numerous in each cell on axile placentas; stigma fusiform or linear, sulcate or striate, shortly 2-lobed at apex, exserted. Fruit baccate, leathery or thinly fleshy, globose to ellipsoid, black or perhaps sometimes white, with calyx limb deciduous; seeds several, medium-sized, plano-convex or concavo-concave, testa membranous, leathery, or crustaceous; endosperm fleshy or corneous; embryo small; cotyledon small, leaflike.
Inflorescences terminal on main and leafy lateral branches, sometimes with supplementary axillary inflorescences infrequently axillary (not in the Flora area), or less often, terminal on very short leafless branches, lax or compact; flowers pedicellate or sometimes shortly so, sometimes pedicels accrescent in fruit.
Stipules frequently with limb dark (dark green when fresh, drying black), seldom coriaceous, often shortly sheathing, triangular and aristate or awned, or infrequently ovate and rounded.
Corolla glabrous or sometimes sparsely pubescent outside; tube shorter than, equal to or much longer than lobes, sparsely to densely pubescent or rarely glabrous at throat.
Seeds 2–several per fruit, brown, smooth, variously shaped, if 2, then hemispherical, with a distinct, usually circular hilar cavity; endosperm entire.
Leaves chartaceous to subcoriaceous or less often coriaceous, mature or immature at time of flowering; blades glabrous or pubescent on both sides.
Calyx limb with both limb-tube and lobes present (TAB. 73/1A), lobes often overlapping, sometimes drying fawn to brown.
Fruit very often turning whitish when mature, 2-locular.
Placenta ± ovate, with 1–15 impressed ovules.
