Monoecious, monocaulous or sparsely branched shrubs or small trees. Stem tips, petioles and base of inflorescence glabrous and often glaucescent. Leaves alternate, clustered at ends of branches, simple or imparipinnate; leaflets in pinnate leaves opposite to subopposite (or sometimes alternate, especially the lower ones); rachis not articulated; petiole with an expanded, clasping base with membranous or scarious margins. Inflorescence terminal, a panicle of umbellules, erect or pendant, the lateral branches, peduncles and umbellules subtended by membranous, scarious or leafy bractlets; pedicels free or basally united into groups of 2–4, articulated below the ovary. Flowers hermaphrodite and protandrous, often also functionally staminate (in andromonoecious species), actinomorphic. Sepals 5, valvate, basally connate often into a short tube, margins sometimes scarious. Petals 5, imbricate or valvate, broadly ovate to obovate or spathulate, keeled within, narrowed to distinctly clawed toward the base. Stamens 5, filaments stout, anthers with 4 thecae, dorsifixed. Ovary inferior, bicarpellate, vestigial in staminate flowers, sometimes prolonged below into a slender stipe, surmounted by a small, rounded to depressed conic nectar disc; styles 2, free. Fruit a drupe (Delarbrea) or schizocarp (Myodocarpus, not in Australia), ellipsoid to ovoid or cylindrical, crowned by the persistent calyx and spreading styles, schizocarpic taxa with a basal median wing on each mericarp; exocarp fleshy or spongy, the endocarp papery to bony with large oil vesicles; endosperm with shallow longitudinal groove, not ruminate.
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