Cephalanthus

Shrubs, small trees or sometimes scandent. Leaves elliptic or ovate-elliptic, entire; stipules ovate, acuminate. Flowers in dense globose heads; heads terminal on short branches, peduncled. Calyx 5-lobed, very much shorter than corolla; lobes ovate to oblong. Corolla 5-lobed; lobes imbricate, ovate, ciliate on inner face, somewhat fleshy, glabrous, maroon; tube funnel-shaped, long, gradually widening from base upwards, greenish white to yellowish. Stamens 5, arising deep in corolla throat, included; filaments linear, shorter than anthers; anthers linear, bluntly apiculate, shortly sagittate. Ovary 2-locular, with a solitary, pendulous ovule in each locule; style terete, long-exserted, gradually thickening upwards into a club-shaped stigma. Fruit clustered in dense globose heads, subsucculent, breaking into 1-seeded cocci. Seeds +/- ovate in outline, convex on one side, flat on other. x = 11 (1 report, aneuploids, polyploidy).