Shrubs to small-or medium-sized trees. Bark usually white, smooth, papery, exfoliating easily; xylem yellow. Branchlets white, slender and rigid, with conspicuous leaf scars. Terminal buds small, with 1 or 2 small and acute caducous scales. Leaves clustered at apex of branchlet; leaf blade pinninerved, reticulate veins like those of Beilschmiedia but usually very fine and nearly foveolate. Panicle axillary, usually slender, many or few flowered, usually upright and branched at a right angle; bracts and bracteoles deciduous. Flowers small or minute, bisexual. Perianth tube developed; perianth lobes generally unequal, outer ones always smaller. Fertile stamens (3 or)9; filaments of 1st and 2nd whorls all glandless, those of 3rd whorl each with 2 small glands at base; anthers 2-celled, cells of 1st and 2nd whorls introrse, those of 3rd whorl extrorse to lateral-extrorse. Staminodes minute, not stalked, triangular, sometimes all absent. Ovary ovoid; style short; stigma subpeltate. Fruit black, shiny, usually ovoid, rarely globose, with fleshy exocarp; fruit stalk generally scarlet or yellow or green, fleshy-dilated, obconical, warty, apex nearly depressed and rarely with persistent perianth lobes.
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