Shrubs or small trees. Leaves opposite or temately verticillate, subsessile or petiolate, usually ovate or oblong stipules entire 2-fid, bicuspidate. Flowers in terminal panicled or thyraoid dense and many-flowered cymes, white, rose or yellow in colour, 4-5-merous, 2-3 bracteate. Hypanthium subglobose, small, persistent. Calyx-lobes 4-5, subequal. Corolla tube salver-shaped or shortly campanulate; lobes 5, oblong-obtuse. Stamens 5, exserted. Ovary 2 (-3)-loculed; style slender; stigma entire 2-fid or 2-partite, Ovules numerous on small globose placentae. Fruit a globose, crustaceous, 2(-3)-locular capsule, loculicidally rarely septicidally 2-valved, many-seeded. Seeds minute horizontally compressed, testa membranous, obscurely winged.