Trees, frequently of gigantic size, rarely shrubby, the leafy twigs ordinarily stout. Leaves usually crowded toward the tips of the twigs, petiolate to sessile, usually conspicuously serrate and large, occasionally rather small for the family and entire or subentire. Flowers usually lateral and cauliflorous, occasionally terminal or subterminal. Hypanthium broadly urceolate, smooth or indefinitely, rarely conspicuously, winged or ribbed. Calyx manifest or reduced to a more or less obscurely 4-to 6-lobed ring. Petals 6-12, rather unequal, large and showy. Androphore radially symmetrical, wholly fertile, the elongate inflexed fleshy fila-ments of the innumerable stamens coherent at the base into a shallow perigynous ring adnate to the base of the corolla; anthers narrowly cylindrical, dehiscent by 2 apical pores. Ovary 4-to 8-celled, containing numerous lateral anatropous ovules on a stout axile placenta; style conic, the stigma 4-to 8-radiate. Fruit a mediocre pyx containing few to several seeds, dehiscing through deliquescence or irregular shredding of the operculum. Embryo differentiated, with fleshy coty-ledons and minute hypocotyl and plumule.
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