Shrubs or small trees 2–10 m. tall or, sometimes, scandent shrubs, glabrous to densely hairy, unarmed or branches with short opposite often recurved spines. Leaves opposite, petiolate; stipules connate into a sheath at base, triangular or oblong, villous inside, produced into a linear or subulate subpersistent or soon deciduous appendage. Flowers small or medium-sized in few–many-flowered dichasial axillary and opposite pubescent or rarely glabrous cymes; bracts small or scarcely developed. Buds lanceolate or cylindrical, ± 4–8 mm. long, acute, ± obtuse, the apex filiform-apiculate, glabrous or tomentose. Calyx-lobes developed but short, rounded-ovate, linear or linear-subulate, usually spreading, often connate at the base. Corolla-tube campanulate or cylindrical, glabrous at the throat but (save in 5 species) with a ring of deflexed hairs in the middle inside; lobes oblong, usually shorter or equalling the tube or in one species filiform-apiculate and much longer. Anthers small, half-exserted, ovate or ovate-lanceolate, glabrous or subpapillose; filaments very short. Ovary 2-locular; style shortly exserted, cylindrical to narrowly obconic; stigmatic club coroniform or mitriform usually widened at base, rarely cylindrical, bilobed at the apex. Disk glabrous. Fruit usually comparatively large, ± didymous, containing 2 often verrucose pyrenes and crowned by the calyx-limb.
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