LVII. EBENACEÆ.
Trees or shrubs, with watery juice, and alternate simple entire leaves, without stipules. Flowers diœcious or polygamous, regular, axillary, articulate with the bibracteolate pedicels; calyx persistent; corolla hypogynous, regular; disk 0; stamens more numerous than the lobes of the corolla, inserted on its base, fewer and rudimentary or 0 in the pistillate flower; filaments short; anthers introrse, 2-celled; ovary several-celled; ovules 2 in each cell, suspended from its apex, anatropous; raphe dorsal; micropyle superior. Fruit a 1 or several-seeded berry. Seeds with copious albumen; embryo axile.
The Ebony family with seven genera and a large number of species is widely distributed in tropical and temperate regions, with two representatives of its most important genus, Diospyros, in the flora of the United States.