Small trees or shrubs. Leaves opposite, entire or spiny-dentate, hairs sometimes appressed and stinging, shortly petioled; stipules minute, caducous. Flowers bisexual, axillary or terminal, fasciculate or subumbellate-corymbose, rarely solitary. Calyx 5-partite, 6-10-glandular, 1-2 glands at base of each calyx-lobe. Petals unequal, clawed, denticulate, sometimes keeled, glabrous. Stamens 10, all perfect; filaments united at base, glabrous, sometimes unequal. Ovary 3-locular; styles 3, free, truncate at apex. Drupes fleshy, composed of 3 pyrenes, these at length scarcely coherent, with 3-5 crests or ribs on back; seeds ovoid; embryo straight; cotyledons plano-convex.
Tropical America and West Indies; ca 30 species, 5 species grown as ornamentals
in India.
KEY TO THE SPECIES
1a. Leaf-margins projected into mucronate marginal teeth