Large trees or rarely shrubs or subshrubs; branches opposite and frequently horizontal. Leaves opposite, usually long-petiolate but very rarely almost sessile, trifoliolate; stipules absent or present and soon caducous; leaflets with short petioles, pinnately nerved, the margins serrate, crenate, dentate or rarely entire; often with 2-4 stipels at the base of the leaflets, the stipels persistent or caducous, sometimes with 2 large and 2 small stipels. Inflorescences terminal racemes with a short rachis, often corymbose; pedicels apically articulate; bracts seldom de-veloped, usually none, the bracteoles lateral, alternate, small, subpersistent or caducous. Flowers hermaphroditic, large; calyx distinctly 5(-6)-lobed, imbricate; petals 5 or rarely 6, imbricate, basally fused together with the base of the fila-ments and often caducous with the filaments; stamens numerous, 57-750, exceed-ing the petals, the filaments bent into an S in bud, those on the interior shorter and sterile or with smaller anthers and often a row of short sterile staminodes on the interior, the basal portion of which forms a glandular nectary, the filaments apically tuberculate and the entire length of the smaller filaments sometimes tu-berculate, the anthers bilocular, oblong, introrse, dorsifixed or basifixed, longi-tudinally dehiscent; ovary usually 4(-6)-locular with 1 ovule in each locule, the styles 4, long, filamentous. Fruits 4-6-locular drupes with 1-4 locules developing and dehiscing into 1-seeded cocci, the mesocarp thick and fatty or fleshy, the endocarp woody, muricate, tuberculate or spinous on the exterior; seeds reniform or subreniform, the embryo with a straight to arcuate radicle. Germination hypo-geal, the first leaves opposite (in 2 species observed).
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