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Trees or shrubs, monoecious or dioecious; indumentum of simple hairs. Leaves alternate, petiolate; stipules persistent or caducous; leaf blade simple, entire, venation pinnate. Flowers in axillary glomerules or spikes, small, sessile or sometimes shortly pedicellate. Male flowers: sepals 4-6, valvate; petals 4-6, small, scalelike; disk cupular or cushionlike; stamens 5; filaments connate up to half their length, topped with rudimentary ovary; anthers usually ovoid, dorsifixed, extrorse, anther bilocular, longitudinally dehiscent. Female flowers: sepals and petals as in male; disk cup-shaped or conical, surrounding basal ovary, sometimes as long as ovary, tearing into lobes during fruit development, rarely absent; ovary 3(or 4)-celled; ovules 2 in each cell; styles 3, bifid at apex. Fruit a capsule, subglobose, (bi-or) trivalvate when mature, sometimes stipitate (carpopodium), epicarp thin, endocarp bony, inside fibrous; columella and sepals persistent. Seeds (1 or)2 in each cell; cotyledons broad, thinly to thickly fleshy; endosperm copious to submembranous. x = 11.
Male flowers: sepals (4)5(6), valvate; petals (4)5(6), minute; disk ± annular or cupular, ± entire; stamens (4)5(6), filaments united below into a staminal column, free and spreading above, anthers basifixed, introrse, longitudinally dehiscent; pistillode (non-functional ovary) 3-lobed to tripartite.
Female flowers: sepals and petals ± as in the male; disk annular, hypogynous or cupuliform, enveloping the ovary; ovary (2)3(4)-locular, ovules 2 per locule; styles (2)3(4), free or united at the base, 1–4 times bifid.
Fruit (2)3(4)-lobed, septicidally dehiscent into as many bivalved cocci; endocarp woody, separating from the pericarp; columella persistent, apically dilated.
Seeds (1)2 per coccus, ecarunculate; endosperm copious or scanty; cotyledons broad, thin or thick and fleshy, flat or folded.
Inflorescences axillary, rarely terminal, fasciculate or pesudo-racemose, uni-or bisexual, bracteate; bracts soon falling.
Leaves alternate, petiolate, stipulate, simple, entire, penninerved.
Monoecious or more rarely dioecious shrubs or trees.
Flowers proterogynous, pedicellate, fragrant.
Indumentum simple.
