Common Name: STAFF-TREE FAMILY
Habit: Shrub (climbing or not), tree, thorny or not, generally glabrous. Leaf: simple, opposite or alternate, deciduous to persistent, subsessile or petioled; veins pinnate. Inflorescence: cluster, cyme, raceme, panicle, or 1-flowered, axillary or terminal, bracted. Flower: generally bisexual, radial, small; hypanthium +- cup-shaped; sepals 4--5; petals (0)4--5, free; stamens 4--5, alternate petals, attached below or to rim of disk; ovary superior or +- embedded in disk, 2--5-chambered, placentas axile or basal, style generally 1, short, stigma +- head-like, 2--5-lobed. Fruit: capsule, winged achene, berry, drupe, or nutlet, often 1-chambered. Seed: generally 1 per chamber, arilled.
Genera In Family: 50 genera, 800 species: worldwide, especially southeastern Asia; some ornamental (Celastrus, Euonymus, Maytenus, Paxistima).
eFlora Treatment Author: Michael A. Vincent & Barry A. Prigge
Scientific Editor: Thomas J. Rosatti.

Habit: Shrub, erect, scabrous. Leaf: alternate, persistent, ascending, leathery, entire; margin generally thicker. Inflorescence: panicle, terminal, many-flowered. Flower: parts in 5s; hypanthium obconic; petals white; disk fused to hypanthium except at top, fleshy, +- white, in age red-purple; ovary superior, narrowly ovoid, stigma lobes 5, slender, spreading. Fruit: nutlet 1, oblong-cylindric, light brown. Seed: 1, straw-colored, difficult to separate from fruit; aril 0.
Etymology: (S.G. Morton, American botanist, physician, 1799--1851)