Description: Shrubs or trees, sometimes climbing, usually with opposite axillary spines, latex milky.
Leaves opposite.
Flowers in short terminal or axillary cymes, pedunculate. Calyx deeply lobed, without glands. Corolla tube cylindrical, pubescent in upper half, throat without scales, lobes contorted in bud, spreading. Stamens included in tube, filaments very short, anthers free from stigma. Carpels fused, ovary 2-locular; placentation axile; ovules several in each loculus; style single.
Fruit a berry; seeds usually 2, without a coma.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 8 species native to Africa, Asia to Australia. . Australia.: 2 species, Qld, N.S.W., N.T., W.A.
Text by G. J. Harden & J. B. Williams; updated Louisa Murray July 2014
Taxon concept:
| One species in NSW: Carissa spinarum |
|
