Shrubs, small trees, or rarely large trees, evergreen, dioecious. Current year branchlets terete or 2-or 4-ribbed; winter buds exposed. Leaves distichous; leaf blade margin usually serrulate. Flowers axillary or congested on leafless branchlets, solitary to several in a cluster, small, pedicellate. Bracteoles 2, close to sepals, alternate. Sepals 5, persistent, imbricate, unequal. Petals 5, white or yellowish, basally slightly connate. Male flowers: stamens 5-35, in 1 whorl; filaments linear, glabrous, free or adnate to base of petals; anthers ovate-oblong to oblong, basifixed, 2-loculed, sometimes locellate (constricted at several places along anther length), connective slightly exserted; pistillode conspicuous. Female flowers: stamens usually absent or sometimes present as staminodes; ovary superior, 2-5-loculed with 3-60 ovules per locule, placentation axile; style 2-5, distinct or variously connate. Fruit baccate, globose, ovoid, or ellipsoid, with 2-60 seeds per locule. Seeds black, globose, shiny, foveolate-pitted; endosperm fleshy; embryo recurved.
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