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Distinguishing features

Shrub 5-25 feet tall; bark smooth and green until several years old; flowers showy, white, pink, yellowish, rose, or deep red with five petals or in some cultivated forms with many petals; leaves simple, evergreen, leathery, narrow and sometimes opposite; pods(often not produced in the United States), long and narrow, contain many seeds with tufts of brown hairs. All parts of the plant exude a gummy, sticky sap when injured. Leaves have a secondary parallel veination approximately perpendicular to their midribs.