Ardisia

Low, soft-wooded, rhizomatous shrubs; branchlets glabrous, longitudinally striate. Leaves alternate, petiolate, spathulate to narrowly oblanceolate, chartaceous, glabrous, with numerous small raised dots on lower surface. Inflorescences axillary, 4-7-flowered pseudofascicles. Flowers bisexual or female; female flowers consisting only of calyx and gynoecium. Calyx 5, imbricate, broadly ovate to suborbicular, minutely fimbriate to erose, glandular. Petals 5, very shortly connate, imbricate, lanceolate, sparsely dotted, abaxially minutely puberulous. Stamens 5; filaments very short, flattened and fused into a short staminal tube fused to corolla tube; anthers large, narrowly lanceolate, acuminate to apiculate at apex, often with dark dots on dorsal face, longitudinally dehiscent. Ovary ovoid to conical, sparsely lepidote towards apex; free-central placenta with 6-8 ovules; style filiform; stigma punctiform. Fruit a globose, 1-seeded, indehiscent, glabrous drupe with brittle endocarp. Seed globose, covered with membranous rudiments of placenta.