Description: Shrubs or small trees, erect, scandent or prostrate, usually much branched; branchlets usually spinose; spines usually at the tips of branchlets or supra-axillary or leaf-opposed, entire or sometimes forked.
Leaves nerveless or obscurely nerved.
Inflorescences umbelliform, with 1–3 flowers in bundles on short slender peduncles. Flowers 4- or 5-merous, corolla with short or long tube, with reflexed hairs at throat; stamens exserted; anthers oblongoid, dorsifixed; style as long as or longer than corolla tube; stigma a fleshy knob with 2 broad flattened lobes.
Fruits ellipsoid or obovoide, slightly fleshy, blackish when ripe, 2-lobed; pyrenes hemispherical, adaxially flattened, woody, exceedingly rugose abaxially.
Distribution and occurrence: Endemic to Australia represented by 1 very variable species.
Text by Louisa Murray
Taxon concept: S.T.Reynolds & R.J.F.Henderson, Austrobaileya 5(2):353-361(1999)
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