Leaves elliptic or ovate to (ovate-)lanceolate, glabrous or slightly pubescent; midrib flat or slightly impressed above, prominent beneath; nerves ascending and often anastomosing in a looped marginal nerve, flat above, ± prominent beneath, intramarginal nerve mostly present. Panicles terminal or axillary, sometimes on leafless older nodes or ramiflorous, erect to usually pendulous, poorly to rather copiously branched; axes terete to more or less angular, puberulous; racemules with very numerous flowers. Flower-bracts persistent. Flowers bisexual or by reduction unisexual and then trees dioecious, 4-5(-6)-isomerous, pedicelled. Receptacle in-and outside puberulous, inside sometimes minutely tomentose, hardly or not accrescent. Sepals deltoid to triangular, persistent. Petals absent. Stamens persistent, in ♀ flowers staminodial and mostly permanently inflexed; filaments filiform, somewhat flattened, connective about orbicular, with or without a tendency to conduplication, dark when dry, anthers apically or laterally on the connective, semiorbicular to broad-linear, latrorse or ± introrse. Ovary superior or almost so, the lower part adhering to the receptacle, (sub)globose to pyramidal, 2-4-carpellate, 2-4-celled, with free or only basally connate septs, badly developed in ♂ flowers; style filiform to subulate, somewhat longer to shorter than the ovary, more or less puberulous, persistent; stigma punctate to capitate. Ovules many, either in horizontal position on the septs or in ± vertical position basally between the septs. Capsule superior or almost so, (sub)globose or more or less (ob)ovoid, puberulous, upper part dehiscent with 2-4 valves, inside split as far as the basal connation of the septs; valves at the top kept together by the non-dehiscent part of style and stigma. Seeds many, very small, in horizontal or vertical position; seed ovoid-ellipsoid, situated latero-centrally in its narrow, membranous wing, which has a shorter or longer apical and basal extension, raphe running closely along the embryo (microscopical!).
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