Courondi Adanson.

Climbing or scrambling shrubs or small trees, glabrous or glabrescent; branchlets subterete, internode usually dilated or slightly flat. Leaves opposite to subopposite, rarely alternate, entire, crenate, or serrate, estipulate. Inflorescences axillary or cauliflorous, thyrsoid, cymose, or fasciculate. Flowers bisexual, 5-merous. Disk fleshy, pulvinate or cupular, entire or lobed, extrastaminal. Stamens (2 or)3; anthers longitudinally, obliquely, or transversely dehiscent, extrorse or apical. Ovary (2 or)3-locular, whole or mostly concealed in disk; ovules axile, 2-9 per locule. Berry spheroid, fleshy or subligneous. Seeds 2-12, angular, exalbuminous, surrounded by mucilaginous arils.

About 200 species: chiefly in tropical regions; ten species (eight endemic) in China.

(Authors: Peng Hua (彭华); A. Michele Funston)