Description: Shrubs or small to medium trees, with simple, scale-like or stellate hairs, unarmed.
Leaves usually opposite, usually 1-foliolate, margins entire.
Inflorescences axillary, cymose [or reduced to single flowers]. Flowers bisexual [or functionally unisexual]. Sepals 4, basally fused. Petals 4, imbricate, free [or coherant basally], persistent in fruit. Stamens 8 [or rarely 4], free [or basally fused], erect or pyramidally arranged and incurved over the ovary [or rarely recurved]. Carpels 4, ± free, lacking a sterile apex; styles fused, arising terminally or subterminally from the carpels; stigma clavate to capitate; ovules 2 in each carpel.
Fruit of 1–4 cocci; cocci not transversely ridged, with rounded apices; seeds released forcibly from dehiscing cocci, dull, brownish black.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 22 species, New Caledonia, Australia & New Guinea. Australia: 6 species (endemic), Qld, N.S.W.
Text by P. G. Richards
Taxon concept:
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