Shrubs or small trees, armed or sometimes unarmed. Leaves aitemate, foliolate or rarely simple; blades shiny, coriaceous, prominently nerved with frequent reticulations between lateral nerves; petioles short, horizontally grooved above, wingless, often articulated with the base of leaflet blade. Inflorescences axillary or rarely terminal, fascicled or racemose or corymbose to umbelliform or paniculate. Flowers medium to large, short- or long-pedicellate, fragrant. Calyx usually of 3 - 5 sepals or sometimes irregularly 2- or 4-lobed. Petals 4 or imbricate. Stamens 6 - 10, free or monadelphous or irregularly fused at base; anthers small, ovoid. Disk annular, sometimes lobed, fleshy. Ovary ovoid, oblong to subglobose, glabrous, 3 - 5-locular, each locule with 1 or 2 ovules; style cylindric, as long as or longer than ovary, glandular, glabrous; stigma capitate, subglobose or truncate, lobed, in some species with stylar canals corresponding to number of locules. Fruit a berry resembling small sized lemons, subglobose to globose, yellowish when ripe, 2 - 5-locular, each locule with few - many conical pulp vesicles with tapering acute apex and facing the inner angle of locule; the pericarp thin, glandular; seeds 2 - 4, oblong-ellipsoid occasionally polyembryonic; cotyledons green.
Tropical forests of India, Sri Lanka,Myanmar, S. China, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malesia and Sumatra; ca 11 species,4 in India.
KEY TO THE SPECIES
1a. Calyx hollow or cupular rupturing into 2 - 4 irregular scariouslobes at anthesis; stamens fused into a staminal tube at 2/3 or 3/4 of its entire length, free above; inflorescence corymbose or umbelliform
b. Calyx differentiated into normal sepals; stamens monadelphous into a complete tube almost throughou their entire length or irregularly united or all free; inflorescence racemose or fascicled
2
2a. Leaflets shallowly narrowed at base, caudate-acuminate at apex; stamens free
