Usually small, dioecious trees, not heavily buttressed. Pith of the branchlets without vascular strands. Leaves without stipules; medulla of the petioles with vascular strands; leaflets entire. Inflorescences mostly axillary, rarely also terminal on larger branchlets, or on smaller axillary shoots which may bear one or a few leaves, or show an obsolete vegetative bud, which is getting overtopped; usually branched from near the base. Flowers 3-merous, small. Calyx 3-dentate to subtruncate. Petals with slightly thickened and inflexed tip. Stamens 6, glabrous, free or adnate to the disk. Disk intrastaminal, 6-lobed, glabrous, undulate or truncate. Pistil glabrous, stigma (sub)sessile; in male flowers slightly reduced. Fruits rarely larger than 2.5 cm long, mostly ovoid or ellipsoid, more rarely globular or pointed at apex; pericarp thin and dry; pyrene papyraceous, 1-seeded, 2 cells fully compressed; calyx persistent, not enlarged. Seed shaped as the fruit; cotyledons planoconvex, thick, entire.
Primary forests, 0-1800 m alt. Some species, e.g. H. clementium in the Cyclops Range, and H.acuminatus f. glabrior near Hollandia, are reported to grow gregariously.
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