Ixora

Shrubs or small trees. Leaves opposite or rarely ternate, sessile or petiolate; blades usually entirely glabrous, less often pubescent beneath, very rarely puberulous above; domatia and bacterial nodules absent; stipules with a truncate to triangular limb, usually connate for most of the length, bearing a short or long, cuspidate or aristate lobe. Flowers bisexual, usually fragrant, 4(5)-merous, few to many, usually borne in triads in terminal, sessile to long-pedunculate +/- lax cymes or rarely spherical heads; branches of inflorescence opposite and articulate or less often absent; pedicels present or absent; bracts stipule-like; bracteoles present or rarely absent. Calyx often reddish in colour, glabrous to shortly pilose or less often pubescent; tube ovoid; limb short, sometimes almost absent, usually as wide as tube, truncate or more usually 4(5)-toothed, shortly lobed or occasionally with well-developed lobes. Corolla white, yellow, pink or red, glabrous outside or rarely pilose; tube cylindric, usually slender, only slightly widened at throat, naked or somewhat bearded at throat; lobes contorted in bud, spreading or reflexing, lanceolate, narrowly elliptic or ovate, much shorter than or occasionally equalling the tube in length. Stamens arising at mouth of tube, exserted and spreading or erect in mature flowers; filaments very short; anthers attached near base, linear, apiculate and sagittate, twisted when dehisced. Disc annular, fleshy. Ovary 2-locular, small; placentas fleshy attached near top of septum; ovules solitary, immersed in placentas; style slender, equalling or slightly exceeding corolla tube, glabrous or sometimes pilose; stigma exserted, 2-lobed; lobes always completely separate when mature, usually recurved, equalling or a little shorter than anthers. Fruit a drupe, usually red (dull brown in dry specimens), spherical or 2-lobed, slightly fleshy or coriaceous, containing 1 or 2, 1-seeded, thin-walled pyrenes; calyx limb persistent. Seeds frequently undeveloped, rusty brown in colour, hemispherical with a deep circular excavation in centre of the plane ventral face, convex dorsal face not sculptured but sometimes with minute protuberances which are occasionally shiny; endosperm entire, cartilaginous; embryo dorsal, curved; cotyledons foliaceous; radicle pointing downwards.