Monoecious or more rarely dioecious trees or shrubs with a simple indumentum. Leaves alternate, shortly petiolate, stipulate, elobate, remotely denticulate, with 2 basal glands, penninerved. Inflorescences usually bisexual, spicate or racemose, axillary, solitary or paired, often exceeding the leaves, laxly-flowered. Flowers small or minute, fragrant, glomerulate along the rhachis, the glomerules usually comprising one ♀ flower accompanied by 2 or more ♂ flowers. Male flowers: pedicels long or 0, not jointed; calyx subglobose and apiculate in bud, later valvately splitting into 3–4 sepals; petals 0; disc-glands numerous, free, minute, disposed among the stamens; stamens 10–40, filaments free, the anther-thecae distinct, fusiform, stipitate, apicifixed, pendulous in bud, at length flexuous-divaricate, dehiscing distally; pistillode 0; receptacle convex. Female flowers: pedicels long or 0, not jointed; sepals 3–6, imbricate; petals 0; disc flattened, deeply 3–6-lobed, the lobes opposite the sepals; ovary 3-locular, with 1 ovule per locule; styles 3, free or almost so, recurved and accumbent on the ovary, laciniate-plumulose. Fruit deeply 3-lobed, dehiscing septicidally into 3 bivalved cocci leaving a persistent columella; endocarp woody. Seeds subglobose, smooth, ecarunculate, testa thinly crustaceous to chartaceous, albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat.
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