Description from
Flora of China
Xolisma Rafinesque.
Shrubs or trees, deciduous or evergreen, often from underground woody burl or producing thickened horizontal underground rhizomes. Buds flattened, conical or ovoid, usually with 2 large imbricate glabrous scales. Leaves spirally arranged, petiolate; leaf blade entire [toothed in United States]. Inflorescences axillary, racemose. Flowers [4- or]5[–8]-merous. Calyx with variously estivated lobes, usually valvate in bud. Corolla white [to red], tubular or urceolate; lobes short. Filaments flattened, geniculate, with or without 1 pair of spurs at anther-filament junction; anthers dehiscing by introrse-terminal elliptic pores. Ovary superior, with many ovules per locule; stigma truncate. Capsule loculicidal, with pale ± thickened sutures sometimes separating from valves in dehiscence. Seeds oblong-ovoid or spindle-shaped to shortly linear, minute, ends often truncated.
Thirty-five species: E Asia, North America; five species (two endemic) in China.
(Authors: Fang Ruizheng (方瑞征 Fang Rhui-cheng); Peter F. Stevens)