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Shrubs or small trees, many prostrate. Leaves serrate to pinnatifid or pinnatipartite, sometimes almost pinnatisect, sometimes bipinnatifid, sometimes entire, hairy becoming glabrous adaxially, closely tomentose or woolly between nerves abaxially. Inflorescence terminal, axillary or on short lateral branchlet, commonly sessile, capitate; receptacle concave, flat or convex; involucre usually prominent, of many imbricate flat or subulate bracts, persistent; flowering usually centripetal; flowers 15-250 per head; floral bracts usually enlarged after flowering. Perianth straight or curved; tepals separating almost to base at anthesis. Pistil straight or curved, with style often exserted to one side before anthesis; pollen presenter usually erect, narrower, as wide as or wider than style. Follicles few per head, woody but not massively so, commonly striate, in 2 species cartilaginous. Seed usually with a terminal wing, rarely elliptic with an annular wing and then without a separator but with 2 supplementary outer wings.
Trees or shrubs, some with prostrate stems. Leaves alternate, sometimes whorled. Flowers many in a dense cylindrical, ovoid or spherical inflorescence, in 3 species reduced and head-like, with a basal involucre of narrow, usually hairy bracts that commonly fall by anthesis; flowers in pairs, each flower subtended by a bract and each pair by a larger 'common bract'. Perianth of 4 ±equal tepals. Pistil usually wiry; pollen presenter scarcely delimited to markedly modified, commonly ribbed. Ovules 2. Fruit a woody follicle. Seeds 1 or 2, with an intermediary 2-winged plate of similar outline and size. Cotyledons with acute basal auricles.
