Caligula Klotzsch; Corallobotrys J. D. Hooker; Desmogyne King & Prain; Pentapterygium Klotzsch.

Shrubs evergreen, epiphytic, rarely terrestrial trees, usually with a swollen rootstock. Leaves spirally arranged, subopposite, or pseudoverticillate, subsessile or shortly petiolate, margin entire or serrate. Flowers axillary, in racemes, corymbs, or fascicles, or solitary. Pedicel articulate, sometimes expanded and forming a cup apically; bracteoles basal, small. Flowers 5-merous. Calyx sometimes 5-winged or -angled; limb 5-fid or deeply -lobed. Corolla red, rarely white or yellow, ± plain colored or with dark colored zig-zag horizontal bands, tubular, rarely globose, urceolate, or campanulate, often more than 1 cm, usually shortly 5-lobed. Stamens 10, ± as long as corolla; filaments short or long; anthers dorsally spurred or not, with 2 long tubules opening by apical pores or slits. Disk annular. Ovary inferior, many ovules per carpel, 10-pseudoloculed by false partitions; stigma small, truncate or capitate. Berry globose, succulent or nearly dry; calyx persistent. Seeds several; testa hard or mucilaginous.

The majority of species of Agapetes is part of the same lineage as many SE Asian-Malesian species of Vaccinium. Species of Agapetes from New Guinea and the SW Pacific are now placed in Paphia Seemann.

There was no satisfactory way to include three of the Chinese species in the following key: for Agapetes camelliifolia (species no. 33) and A. leiocarpa (no. 29) no flowering material was seen, and in A. malipoensis (no. 44) the leaves are sometimes subopposite.

About 80 species: from the E Himalayas through SW China and Indochina to SE Asia; 53 species (17 endemic) in China.

(Authors: Fang Ruizheng (方瑞征 Fang Rhui-cheng); Peter F. Stevens)