Monoecious or dioecious shrubs or subherbaceous undershrubs. Indumentum (when present) simple, hairs multicellular. Leaves alternate, distichous, petiolate, often only shortly so, stipulate, simple, entire, penninerved. Flowers axillary, fasciculate, the fascicles unisexual or bisexual; if unisexual, male flowers several per fascicle, female flowers usually solitary. Male flowers: pedicels long, very slender; sepals 5, imbricate; petals 0; disc annular or patelliform, slightly lobed, the lobes opposite to the sepals, adnate to the calyx, at least partially so; stamens 5, with the filaments united 1/4 to almost their entire length into a slender or stout column, anthers extrorse, quadrilobate, laterally dehiscent; pistillode cylindric, entire or trifid, at the apex of the staminal column. Female flowers: pedicels very long, slender, distinctly articulate near the base; sepals and disc as in the ♂ flowers; ovary smooth, glabrous, 3-locular, with 2 ovules per locule; styles slightly connate at the base, bipartite or deeply bifid, stigmas usually capitate. Fruits trilobate, dehiscing septicidally into 3 bivalved cocci leaving a persistent columella; endocarp thinly woody. Seeds often 1 per locule due to abortion, reniform, pitted, ecarunculate; endosperm copious; cotyledons broad, flat; radicle over 1/2 the length of the cotyledons, bent.
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