Erect or climbing, unarmed shrubs, hairy or glabrous, often foetid, sometimes with underground suckers or rhizomes. Lvs usually opposite, rarely whorled, simple. Fls in axillary cymes or terminal corymbs or panicles, pedicellate, fairly large. Calyx campanulate, usually turbinate, sometimes tubular, 5-toothed to deeply 5-lobed, often strongly accrescent. Corolla usually strongly zygomorphic, salverform with tube narrow for most of length; limb 5-lobed. Stamens 4, didynamous, inrolled in bud, long-exserted and usually curved at anthesis. Style exserted, 2-fid. Ovary incompletely 4-celled, each cell with 1 ovule. Fr. a drupe, often enclosed in calyx, often 4-lobed; exocarp succulent or nearly dry; pyrenes 1-4.