Annual or short-lived perennial herbs with subsessile glands or simple and gland-tipped hairs, aromatic. Leaves alternate, simple, entire or variously dissected. Flowers without bracts, minute, bisexual (or male) and female, in compact clusters, axillary, spicate, or paniculate in arrangement. Tepals 1–4 (3 or 4 in terminal bisexual flowers of glomerule), free or united towards base; limb hooded and often inflated or spongy. Stamens 1 or 2; disc absent. Ovary ellipsoidal; styles 1 or 2, linear, delicate. Pericarp usually diaphanous. Seed erect to horizontal, globular to ellipsoidal or laterally compressed; testa crustaceous, smooth; embryo lateral or basal, situated beneath a groove (embryo-groove); radicle inferior or superior.
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