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Trees or shrubs. Branchlets usually stellate. Leaves alternate; stipule minute, caducous; petiole short; leaf blade basal veins 3-5, margin serrate or rarely lobed. Flowers bisexual, polygamous, or unisexual (plants monoecious), usually arranged in 3-to many-flowered cymes, solitary or fascicled, axillary or opposite leaves, rarely terminal. Peduncle and pedicel usually hairy. Bracts caducous. Sepals 5, yellow, white, or lilac, rarely brown, free, valvate, abaxially hairy, adaxially usually glabrous, rarely hairy. Petals 5, mostly yellow or white in Flora area, shorter than sepals; glands usually scalelike, borne on base of petals, margin usually villous. Androgynophore short, usually glabrous. Stamens many, free, irregular in length; anthers globose, dorsifixed, dehiscence longitudinal. Ovary 2-4-loculed; ovules 2-8 per locule; style simple; stigma swollen, peltate, entire or 2-4-lobed. Drupe usually with 2 or 4 drupelets. Endosperm copious; cotyledons flat.
Trees, shrubs or rarely climbers; often stellate-hairy. Leaves alternate, often distichous, trinerved at base, entire or toothed; stipules caducous. Inflorescence cymose, usually axillary, few-flowered, solitary or clustered, or leaf-opposed or terminal; flowers subtended by caducous bracts. Sepals 5, free, pubescent. Petals 5, free, usually shorter than sepals, glandular or hairy towards base. Stamens many, on a short androgynophore. Ovary 2–4-locular; ovules 2–8 per locule. Style usually slender; stigma peltate or lobulate. Fruit fleshy, often much reduced, drupaceous, 1–4-locular, lobed or almost entire, with 1–4 pyrenes, each with 1–several seeds.
Ovary 2–4-locular, entire or 2–4-lobed, with 2 to many axile ovules in each loculus; style longer than the ovary, with subulate or flattened lobes or almost entire.
Stamens indefinite, free, usually raised on a torus or androgynophore which is short and glabrous or produced above into a pubescent extension.
Petals 5, shorter than the sepals, yellow, purplish-blue or white, usually with a nectariferous claw or gland at the base.
Fruit a 1–4-lobed drupe or berry with 1–4 pyrenes; mesocarp somewhat fleshy or fibrous; endocarp hard and woody.
Sepals 5, linear-oblong or linear-spathulate, stellately hairy outside, often coloured within like the petals.
Leaves alternate, simple, serrate or very rarely entire, 3–7-nerved at the base, petiolate; stipules lateral.
Flowers in terminal or axillary panicles or in leaf-opposed or axillary umbel-like cymes.
Shrubs or smallish trees.
