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Leafy parasitic shrubs, glabrous but young twigs often strongly furfuraceous; epicortical roots from base of plant but not from stems, sometimes lacking at least at maturity. Leaves paired, often leathery; venation palmate or pinnate, containing characteristic stellate fiber bundles along smaller veins. Inflorescences solitary in leaf axil or sometimes clustered, sometimes arranged in a terminal, compound, squamate inflorescence, individually a spike, flowers sessile in cavities of often swollen axis, each flower subtended by 2 minute, acute, strap-shaped bracteoles. Flowers bisexual, small, 6-merous (in the Guianas species), yellow to dark red; petals and stamens dimorphic; pollen with 3 circular depressions on each face; style straight, with scarcely differentiated stigma. Fruit green, yellow-green, red to purple or black; endosperm copious, white or yellowish; mature seed with fleshy, dicotylous embryo, cotyledons massive, haustorial disk well differentiated.
Erect shrubs, almost always with aerial roots starting from the base of the stem. Leaves opposite, coriaceous. Flowers minute, perfect, 6-merous, more or less immersed in the rachis of the spikes; bractlets poorly developed or absent. Pollen grains strongly reticulate. Stigma capitate. Fruit baccate, the seeds albuminous.
