Ceraria

Shrublets, shrubs, or small trees, with stout waxy branches; plants dioecious. Leaves in pairs or fascicled, small, few, succulent, flat or terete. Inflorescences cymose clusters, fascicles or axillary racemes. Flowers unisexual or only rarely bisexual. Sepals 2, short, persistent. Petals 5, free, longer than sepals, hypogynous, at length accrescent. Stamens 5, usually with aborted anthers in female flowers. Ovary 3-angled, slightly flattened; ovule solitary, basal, rudimentary in male flowers; style short or 0; stigma 2- or 3-fid. Fruit a nut, compressed, asymmetrical, membranous, tightly enclosed in base of accrescent corolla, at first single-winged, but later becoming fleshy and wingless. x= 8 (high polyploidy).