Lianas; young stem apices puberulent with simple hairs. Leaves alternate, petiolate, stipulate (stipules small and deciduous); blades entire or dentate, palmately or pinnately veined, usually stipellate and with a pair of sessile glands at base. Inflorescences axillary, narrowly paniculate or thyrsoid, hermaphroditic or male; female flowers 1 or 2 at the base of hermaphroditic inflorescences, male flowers in more or less abbreviated distal monochasia; bracts small, eglandular. Staminate flowers pedicellate; calyx splitting into usually 4 lanceolate segments; petals absent; receptacle slightly to distinctly conical; disc of interstaminal segments or absent; stamens 10-40, the filaments free or more or less basally adnate to the receptacle, the anthers more or less 4-lobed, apiculate; pollen grains oblate, 3-colpate, tectate; pistillode rudimentary or absent. Pistillate flowers with stout pedicels; calyx-segments 4 or S, barely imbricate; petals and disc absent; ovary of 3 or 4 carpels, ovules solitary in each locule, the styles connate at least half way, the style-tips entire or obscurely bilobed. Fruits large, capsular, cocci smooth to carinate or winged, rather thick-walled; seeds globose to lenticular, smooth, ecarunculate, endosperm present, the cotyledons ovate, palmately veined.
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