Slender trees or shrubs, rarely to 20 m high; heteroblastic with noticeably different developmental stages. Juvenile stages with leaves with dentate margin, clustered around spinescent short shoots; inflorescences are usually simple botrya or paired solitary flowers. Adult stages with leaves entire, alternate or clustered; spinescent short shoots rare; inflorescences are generally leafy, bracteose panicles, pyramidal masses of flowers on third or fourth order lateral branching. A range of intermediate stages occur between these two stages, and several species in New South Wales (Bursaria cayzerae, B. longisepala) maintain juvenile stages. Inflorescences with regular, protandrous, bisexual, occasionally staminate flowers in lower inflorescence branching (andromonoecy: Bursaria spinosa, B. occidentalis, B. incana). Sepals are green-cream, spreading from base, shed rapidly. Petals free, white, yellowing with age and sex phase change, spreading star shaped from the base. Stamens with versatile yellow anthers much shorter than the white, tapering filaments; dehiscence is from slits at petal break. Pistil variably stalked, flattened ± tomentose; ovary mostly bilocular, ovules numerous; style slender,stigma minute; staminate flowers with pistillode tissue. Fruits are capsular, loculicidally and part septicidally dehiscent, green-brown, usually flattened, purse-shaped, chartaceous, becoming woodier with age, numerous, persisting on the bush/tree for many months after seed shed. Seeds numerous, red-brown, dry, flat, reniform, often winged.
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