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Trees or shrubs, with spreading branches often ending in spines, usually with a light yellowish or greyish bark. Leaves fascicled, alternate or irregularly spaced, simple, entire, coriaceous, petiolate. Inflorescence terminal or axillary, pedunculate or sessile racemes, panicles or corymbs, sometimes flowers fascicled; bracts setaceous or linear, entire, trifid, often caducous. Sepals 4, fleshy, scarcely fused at base with fleshy corona, valvate, yellowish green. Petals usually 0, rarely 1-4, spathulate. Stamens 5-22, hardly fused in an androphore. Ovary on a gynophore up to 8 mm long, ovoid, 1-locular, with (2)4-8 ovules on two parietal placentas. Fruit a berry with clusters of stone cells in exocarp. Seeds usually 1 or 2, usually with a pustulate or colliculate surface.