Small evergreen shrubs, usually spinescent, glabrescent with simple and stellate hairs on the young leaves. Leaves alternate-fasciculate, petiolate, entire, conduplicate when young; lamina discolorous, margin flat (sometimes most leaves fallen but a tight cluster of nodes still apparent); stipules scarious, connate at base between the petiole and stem, ± persistent. Inflorescence comprising several flowers in densely contracted cymes in the axils of the fasciculate leaves (i.e. the flowers appearing to be in lateral umbels on short shoots). Flowers bisexual, 5-partite, long-pedicellate; bracts at base base of pedicels persistent. Hypanthium long-tubular, usually slightly widened at base, glabrous. Sepals ± erect, persistent in fruit. Petals erect, cucullate, shortly clawed, smooth; claw not adnate to base of stamen filament. Stamens enclosed in and shorter than or subequal to the petals, erect to incurved. Disc forming a narrow, undulate ring around the ovary base, free, smooth, glabrous, becoming circular in fruit. Ovary superior or largely so, carpels 3; style entire, glabrous, smooth, stigma slightly 3-lobed. Fruit a schizocarpic capsule, superior or largely so; fruitlets crustaceous, splitting longitudinally along their inner surface and over the summit to release the solitary seed. Seeds uniformly coloured above a darkened base; aril basal, moderately large, translucent.
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