Tree lacking buttresses. Bark ash-grey, flaky with pale, irregular or round lenticels. Shoots with pseudoverticillate leaves and spirally ascending, reduced, bract-or scale-like leaves ('cataphylls'). Leaves entire and simple; juvenile leaves simple with dentate margins. Inflorescence simple, axillary, forming condensed racemes, usually 1 flower perfect, the others male; peduncles with many spirally ascending, obovate bracts. Flowers antero-posteriorly oriented. Tepal aestivation valvate, circinate after anthesis. Stamens with thin, elongate, cylindrical filaments, longer than tepals; anthers elongate, pendulous, with broad connectives, without terminal appendages; pollen grains with 3 pores. Ovary shortly stipitate, with ascending hairs in alternitepalous positions; style elongate, with fused suture; stigma slightly crestiform-lipped. Fruit globose or ovoid, glabrous, pericarp forming 3 layers: a very thin outer layer, a spongy middle layer, and a hard, bony inner layer with inward-facing, longitudinally arranged ribs. Seed large and multicanaliculate.
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