Shrubs or trees, the twigs laterally compressed, the plane of compression often decussate from successive nodes, with white, brown, yellow, or clear latex. Leaves evergreen, opposite, simple, entire, glabrous or variously pubescent, co-riaceous or nearly so, nerves impressed above, raised beneath, with more or less parallel secondary veins connecting the lateral, petiolate, estipulate. Inflores-cences racemose or paniculate, axillary at mostly defoliated nodes or rarely ter-minal; pedicels subtended by 3 minute bracts. Flowers bisexual or unisexual, 4-5-merous; sepals in two series, usually differing in shape, texture and vestiture, persistent in fruit; petals membranous, fugaceous; stamens numerous, the fila-ments free, anthers linear, longitudinally dehiscent with a tubular, rotate or fili-form appendage at the end of the connective; ovary 3-5-celled, ovules numerous in each locule, attached to an axile placenta, the style simple, the stigma conical or nearly so. Fruit a septicidal capsule, in dehiscence the valves often twisting and revealing the papyraceous column; seeds minute, elliptic-oblong, comose at both ends.
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