Covellia Gasparrini.

Trees, shrubs, or climbers, usually terrestrial, rarely epiphytic; dioecious. Creeping branches with adventitious roots. Stipules fully amplexicaul or sometimes semiamplexicaul. Leaves spirally arranged; leaf blade margin often toothed; wax glands in axils of main basal veins, often also in other vein axils or also on nodes. Figs usually axillary on leafy stems, sometimes below leaves, solitary or paired, interfloral bracts absent, internal bristles mostly present, apical pore relatively large, with 3 or more upper bracts visible; involucral bracts usually present. Perianth lobes joined or free, occasionally absent, often hairy. Male flowers: dispersed or around apical pore, pedicellate or sessile; stamens 1-3(-4); pistillode usually absent. Gall flowers: with a simple often ± funnel-shaped stigma. Female flowers: stigma often 2-parted, subulate, not conspicuously papillate. Fruit an achene.

Corner placed all dioecious species of Ficus in this subgenus, but we have followed Berg, who transferred some of the more distinctive groups into the additional subgenera, F. subgen. Synoecia and F. subgen. Sycidium or into an enlarged F. subgen. Sycomorus. The species remaining are all pollinated by fig wasps belonging to the genus Blastophaga.

About 60 species: from NE Africa and the Mediterranean region through Asia to China; 35 species (eight endemic, one introduced) in China.