PLANTS: Shrubs evergreen, rounded, yellowish.

LEAVES: small, alternate, simple, entire, subsessile, closely crowded, ascending, l-nerved, coriaceous, often with thickened or revolute margins; stipules minute, glandlike, caducous.

FLOWERS: 5-merous throughout, distinctly perigynous; hypanthium 5- or 10-fibbed, cupulate or turbinate-campanulate; nectary disk a ring or crown around the inside top of the hypanthium, the green sepals and short white petals clearly external to the disk, but the filaments arising as lobes from it; ovary imperfectly 5-loculed; style short, persistent, the stigmas 5, linear, spreading or recurved.

INFLORESCENCE: crowded bracteate racemes or raceme-like thyrses terminating some of the branches.

FRUITS: small, dry, oblong-cylindric, light brown to light green, capsule-like but indehiscent.

SEEDS: 1 per locule, oblong, straw-colored, without an aril. --5-8 spp., 1 in AZ; sw U.S. and n Mex. (For S. G. Morton).

REFERENCES: Brasher, Jeffrey W. 1998. Celastraceae J. Ariz. - Nev. Acad. Sci. 30(2): 57.