Small to medium-sized glabrous trees. Leaves alternate, borne towards the tips of the branches, persistent or deciduous, petiolate, coriaceous, entire, pinnately nerved, involute when young. Flowers axillary, solitary or in small cymes, 3–5-merous, apetalous. Receptacle top-shaped. Sepals 3–5, coriaceous, valvate or reduplicate-valvate, persistent, sometimes enlarging on the fruit. Stamens numerous, in many series, sometimes in 4 groups opposite the sepals; filaments free, unequal, often bent in bud; anthers elliptic or oblong. Ovary inferior, 3–5-locular, the locules equal in number to the sepals and alternating with them; style slender, shortly divided into 3–5 branches at the top; ovules 15–20 in each locule, horizontal or oblique, anatropous. Fruit cone-or top-shaped, very tough or woody, round in section or with 3–5 wings or angles alternating with the sepals, 1–4-locular, each locule1-seeded. Seeds small, elongate or subglobose; albumen thin and fleshy; embryo narrow, slightly curved, with a long radicle.
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