genus descriptions: SSTAs

Trees with glabrous vegetative parts; branches slender, dark brown, striate. Leaves entire or serrulate, often somewhat undulate, petiolate with caducous stipules. Flowers bisexual or male by abortion, in lax racemes or crowded and +/- spicate. Sepals 4 or 5, almost free, outer ones scarcely smaller, usually orbicular. Petals 4-7, imbricate like inner sepals but larger, with thick hairy scales adnate at base within. Stamens indefinite, free; anthers linear to narrowly lanceolate, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary free, glabrous or hairy, 1-locular with 2-4 multi-ovulate placentas; style short or long, simple or divided in upper half into 2-4 branches; stigmas 2-4, short. Fruit a globose capsule with hard leathery pericarp; style persistent, splitting into 2-4 longitudinal sections. Seeds few.

Unarmed small trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate, petiolate, persistent, entire, oblong, oblanceolate, obovate or elliptic, apex usually shortly attenuate, base cuneate, nerves in 6-8 pairs, steeply ascending; stipules 0. Flowers bisexual, small, solitary or rarely 2 or 3 together from same axil, subsessile, subtended by several minute suborbicular bracts. Sepals 5 or 6, in one whorl, imbricate, densely pubescent outside and in upper part of inside, reflexed at anthesis. Petals 0. Stamens 40-60, arising on a flat receptacle with several small glands, among many hairs; filaments filiform; anthers small, connective generally rather obscure. Ovary glabrous, 1-locular, with 2-4 parietal placentas bearing few to many ovules; style columnar, 2-4-lobed or -partite at apex. Fruit baccate, with persistent style, 1-locular, hardly or tardily and irregularly dehiscent; pericarp coriaceous. Seeds few; testa hard.

Tall trees; bark light grey; branches thin; branchlets greyish brown with pale lenticels, with a thin grey pubescence when young. Leaves alternate, petiolate, ovate, broadly elliptic or somewhat obovate, long-acuminate at apex, crenate-dentate; stipules absent. Flowers bisexual, in axillary or rarely terminal, dense, cylindric racemes; pedicels articulated near middle; bracts small and linear; receptacle very shallow. Sepals 5 or 6, valvate, with broad, truncate, pubescent glands adnate to base of each sepal. Petals 0. Stamens in fascicles of +/- 10 alternating with sepals; filaments folded in bud; anthers globose, very small. Ovary 1-locular with 4-6 multi-ovulate placentas; styles 4-6, filiform. Fruit a small dry capsule with 4-6 valves. Seeds few, with long hairs; endosperm fleshy; cotyledons thin and flat.

Shrubs to medium-sized trees without buttresses. Leaves mostly rounded or retuse at apex, only rarely acuminate with +/-rounded extrafloral nectary at base of midrib above, and sometimes additional ones in lower nerve axils; midrib and lateral nerves +/-impressed above, prominent beneath, venation almost always very densely reticulate beneath; indumentum very varied: hairs simple, fasciculate or stellate, short or rather long, straight, curved or coiled, with small, spherical glands sparse to dense on both surfaces, making blade viscid. Flowers in axillary, small or compound panicles. Sepals and petals densely silky-pilose or velvety outside, pilose at base inside. Receptacle slightly produced into a very short thick androgynophore. Stamens many; anthers short, connectives often produced into short, triangular or ovate appendages at apex. Ovary ovoid, hairy, completely 3-5-locular, with 2 ovules in each locule. Fruit subglobose, woody, surrounded by 5 subequal, minutely hairy wings derived from accrescent sepals.