Vismia Vand.

Trees or shrubs with simple and also stellate or dendroid hairs, glandular canals containing yellow to orange resinous sap, and glandular loculi or vittae con-taining amber or black secretions. Leaves opposite, entire, petiolate or rarely sessile, the secondary venation pinnate, the tertiary venation reticulate, the lam-ina often with dark glands, usually densely pubescent or tomentose beneath. In-florescences many-2-flowered, usually thyrsoid, terminal and often also axillary, rarely only axillary or cauliflorous; bracts and bracteoles represented by tomentose ledges; pedicels present. Flowers homostylous or dimorphically heterostylous, the perianth erect; sepals 5, quincuncial, the outer parts thick in bud, usually tomentose, the inner parts thin in bud, often scarious, glandular-vittate or-punctate; petals 5, white or greenish white to yellow, asymmetric or not, eglandular or variously glandular-vittate or-punctate, deciduous, externally glabrous, internally whitish-villous; stamen fascicles free or rarely united with the petals, glabrous or villous, deciduous or persistent, each with many-3 stamens, the filaments slender, more than half united, the anthers ovoid or globose with an amber (? or dark) gland on the connective; staminodial fascicles 5, glabrous or pilose, alternating with the stamen fascicles; ovary glabrous, 5-locular with axile placentas, each placenta with many-5 ovules, the styles 5, free or coherent below but not united, sometimes hirsute, the stigma broadly capitate to recurved-bifid. Fruit a smooth glabrous berry with fleshy pericarp, or thin pericarp, and then 5-lobed and sometimes apparently capsular when dried, often glandular-punctate, many seeded; seeds small with the testa finely reticulate, not or scarcely carinate, the embryo slender, straight, with distinct straight cotyledons.