THYMELAEACEAE  

Erect shrubs, lianes or small trees; young branches red-brown with prominent corky lenticels. Leaves opposite or alternate, petiolate, coriaceous, ovate to narrowly elliptic to lanceolate, glabrous, margin recurved. Flowers bisexual, in 3(4)-flowered, almost sessile axillary clusters; pedicels slender. Calyx: receptacle tube funnel-shaped, not contracted above ovary; calyx lobes 5 or 6, ovate-oblong. Petals minute, scale-like, arising at throat of receptacle between filaments. Stamens twice as many as sepals, alternately long and short, in a single series at mouth of receptacle tube; filaments slender, decurrent down receptacle tube; anthers oblong. Disc cup-shaped, lobed. Ovary 1-locular, sessile; style filiform; stigma capitate. Fruit drupaceous with sclerified pericarp, inside persistent receptacle tube. Seed without endosperm; cotyledons thick.