Section Virentes Loudon  

Large trees to low rhizomatous shrubs. Bark dark brown or black and deeply furrowed, smooth and hard on vigorous young trunks and branches. Twigs minutely fulvous-stellate-tomentulose (or with glandular puberulence and spreading hairs admixed). Buds rounded, nearly glabrous, usually russet. Leaves evergreen, coriaceous or chartaceous, often quite thick, small or moderate-sized, predominantly elliptic and subentire or obovate and repandly coarse-toothed, margins slightly or very markedly revolute, blades plane or strongly concave beneath, glabrous or nearly so and lustrous above, minutely appressed- stellate-canescent beneath, sometimes with spreading stellate hairs and glandular puberulum in addition; veins highly reticulate, moderately or very prominent beneath or relatively obscure, sometimes impressed above. Staminate catkins stellate-pubescent, the pubescent anthers moderately exserted from the calyces. Fruit annual, moderate-sized, the cups characteristically turbinate, the scales canescent or fulvous.

[from Muller 1961]