Evergreen shrubs or trees; stems dark brown, terete or striate. Leaves alternate, simple, sessile or subsessile, undulate, crenate-serrate or serrate, glabrous or sparsely pubescent beneath, exstipulate. Flowers small, unisexual, axillary, solitary or in fascicles, actinomorphic, bracteate and bracteolate. Sepals 5(- 6), free or shortly connate, elliptic, ovate to orbicular, glabrous or pubescent outside, imbricate, persistent. Petals 5(- 8), white, greenish, pinkish or yellow, connate at base, elliptic oblong, obovate, imbricate. Stamens 5 - 20, unequal, free or connate at base, sometimes adnate to the petals, glabrous; filaments filiform; anthers basifixed, apiculate. Ovary ovoid to subglobose, 2 - 5 carpellary, syncarpous, glabrous or pubescent, usually 3, rarely 2 - 5-loculed, ovules many in each locule, placentation axile; styles as many as carpels, free or connate; stigmas 2 - 5, glabrous or hairy. Berries ovoid, globose or subglobose, brown to bluish, tipped by persistent style, indehiscent. Seeds small, numerous, dark brown, angular, tubercled, reticulate with fleshy endosperm.
In Tropical and subtropical Asia and a few in C. America, ca 88 species; 8 in India.
Literature.
VESQUE, M.J.(1895). Revisio du genre Eurya Thunb. Bull. Soc. Bot. France 42: 151 - 161. KOBUSKI, C.E.(1938). Studies in Theaceae-3. Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 25: 299 - 359. KOBUSKI C.E. (1939). Studies in Theaceae-4. J. Arn. Arb. 20: 361 - 374.
1a. Branchlets and apical buds glabrous; leaf apices obtuse to subacute; sepals glabrous outside
2
b. Branchlets and apical buds pilose; leaf apices acuminate; sepals pubescent outside
3
2a. Leaves undulate and bluntly serrate; anthers longer than filaments; styles ca 0.8 mm long