Short-lived trees or shrubs, or annuals, dioecious or monoecious, glabrous or papillose, soft-wooded. Branchlets often orange, brown or red. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, sessile or petiolate, often succulent; stipules small. Flowers small, actinomorphic or almost so, solitary, or in racemes or panicles, axillary or terminal. Calyx broadly cupular, lobed or entire, persistent, the lobes imbricate in bud. Corolla absent. Male flower: stamens 7–100, in one or several concentric series, when uniseriate with a central disc; anthers almost sessile, quadrangular, 2-locular, opening widely by longitudinal slits. Female flower: carpels 2 to many, either connate around a central column, or fused, sometimes solitary; ovules 1 per carpel, campylotropous; placentation axile; stigmas 1 per carpel, free or shortly united with each other, rarely divided. Fruit a dry or succulent schizocarp, a hard achene or a syncarp; carpels often falling before shedding seeds. Seeds U-shaped, usually rugose, red-brown; aril prominent, translucent; embryo strongly curved; endosperm present.
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