General description:- Trees or shrubs.

Leaves:- Simple, usually stipulate.

Flowers:- Inflorescence cymose. Flowers with the sepals, petals and stamens carried up around the ovary on a cup-shaped extension (hypanthium) (perigynous). Calyx 4- to 5-lobed, lobes valvate in bud. Petals 4-5, often small and sometimes absent, inserted at mouth of the hypanthium and often hooded over the stamens. Stamens 4-5, alternating with the calyx-lobes; anthers versatile. Ovary superior, 2- to 4-celled (locular); ovules solitary.

Fruit:- Often fleshy.

RHAMNUS

General description:- Germination above ground (epigeal). winter buds with scales.

Leaves:- Stipules awl-shaped (subulate), caducous.

Flowers:- 4-merous or sometimes 5-merous, usually unisexual but monoecious. Styles 3-4; stigmas small.

Fruit:- A drupe with 2-4 pyrenes.

Key features:-
1) Stipules soft, often caducous.
2) Winter buds with scales.
3) Flowers usually 4-merous, often unisexual.

Sect. ALATERNUS

General description:- Not spiny.

Leaves:- Alternate, evergreen

Flowers:- 4- to 5-merous, in racemose inflorescences, rarely solitary.