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Woody plants, trees, shrubs or climbers with resin-ducts in the bark, rarely spiny. Leaves alternate, often crowded at the ends of the branches, simple, evergreen and ± leathery, entire or rarely dentate or lobed, without stipules. Inflorescences cymose or paniculate, terminal and/or axillary, rarely flowers in clusters on the old wood or solitary, terminal and/or axillary. Flowers actinomorphic or somewhat irregular, hypogynous, bisexual or functionally (rarely morphologically) unisexual. Sepals 5, free or ± connate, sometimes imbricate. Petals 5, free or with claws slightly connivent, usually with spreading or revolute blades, imbricate in bud. Stamens 5, free, with 2-thecous introrse anthers opening by slits, rarely by apical pores. Ovary sessile or shortly stipitate, paracarpous, with 2–5 carpels and parietal placentas, usually 1-locular, or, less often, 2–5-locular by central contact of the placentas; style simple, stigma capitate or somewhat lobed; ovules 2-several in 2 rows, anatropous, horizontal, with one integument. Fruit a berry or a capsule with entire, rarely split valves. Seeds without an aril but often covered by a viscid resin, rarely dry and winged, with a smooth testa, a hard endosperm and a very minute embryo.