Tall trees with soft bark and more or less tetragonal branches and branchlets. Leaves deciduous, petiolate or subsessile, mostly large and broad, entire or denticulate, decussate-opposite or ternate. Inflorescences cymose, the cymes numerous, many-flowered, borne in massive terminal panicles and sometimes smaller axillary cymes in the upper leaf-axils. Flotvers actinomorphic; calyx gamosepalous, campanulate, shortly 5-7 lobed, persistent, in fruit greatly enlarged and often inflated, enveloping the fruit and closed above it; corolla gamopetalous, hypocrateriform, white or blue, the tube short cylindric, the limb patent or re-flexed, 5-7-parted, the lobes subequal, overlapping in bud; stamens 5 or 6, inserted in the corolla-tube, equal, exserted, the anthers ovate or elliptic-oblong, 2-celled, dorsifixed, the thecae parallel-opening by longitudinal slits; pistil single, elongate, the style terminal, capillary, the stigma very shortly bifid, its branches subequal, the ovary compound, 2-carpellate, completely 4-celled (each carpel 2-celled), each cell 1-ovulate, the ovules lateral or high-lateral, hemianatropous. Fruit drupaceous, rounded or weakly 4-lobed, completely enveloped by the enlarged fruiting-calyx with a thin subcarneous exocarp, a thick bony 4-celled endocarp, and a small central cavity between the cells; seeds without endosperm.
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