Xolisma Rafinesque.

Shrubs or trees, deciduous or evergreen, often from underground woody burl or producing thickened horizontal underground rhizomes. Buds flattened, conical or ovoid, usually with 2 large imbricate glabrous scales. Leaves spirally arranged, petiolate; leaf blade entire [toothed in United States]. Inflorescences axillary, racemose. Flowers [4- or]5[–8]-merous. Calyx with variously estivated lobes, usually valvate in bud. Corolla white [to red], tubular or urceolate; lobes short. Filaments flattened, geniculate, with or without 1 pair of spurs at anther-filament junction; anthers dehiscing by introrse-terminal elliptic pores. Ovary superior, with many ovules per locule; stigma truncate. Capsule loculicidal, with pale ± thickened sutures sometimes separating from valves in dehiscence. Seeds oblong-ovoid or spindle-shaped to shortly linear, minute, ends often truncated.

Thirty-five species: E Asia, North America; five species (two endemic) in China.

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