Dioecious shrubs or small trees with an evanescent simple indumentum. Buds not perulate. Twigs stout. Leaves alternate, long-petiolate, stipulate, large, simple, crenate, serrate or dentate, membranous, penninerved, often purplish tinged. Inflorescences axillary, solitary, pedunculate, racemose, with the flowers arranged interruptedly along the axis, bracteate, the ♂’s in clusters of 3–11, the ♀’s solitary, pedicellate. Male flowers; calyx closed in bud, subglobose, apiculate, later splitting into 3–4 valvate lobes; petals 0; disc urceolate, extrastaminal, entire or lobulate; stamens 6–12, on a slightly raised receptacle, filaments short, free, anthers erect, 2-thecous, extrorse, basifixed, the thecae obovoid, free except at the base, longitudinally dehiscent; pistillode 0. Female flowers: calyx 4-partite, the lobes imbricate, smaller than in ♂; petals 0; disc-glands 2, broadly triangular, petaloid; ovary 2-locular, with 1 ovule per locule; styles 2, free, recurved, broad at the base, stigmas plumosely laciniate. Fruit dicoccous, or rarely monococcous by abortion, loculicidally dehiscent; cocci subglobose; endocarp coriaceous. Seeds ± spherical, enclosed by a thin fleshy aril; testa crustaceous, foveolate-reticulate or ± smooth; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat.
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