Trees or sometimes shrubs, deciduous, mostly unarmed, the trunk straight of spindle-shaped, the young branches generally whitish-pruinose. Leaves petiolate, compound-digitate or seldom simple; digitate leaves 3-to 9(-11)-foliolate, the leaflets inarticulate, sessile or petiolulate and entire; simple leaves with inarticulate and entire blade. Inflorescences cymose, the cymes 2-to 5-flowered, unipared or not, or flowers solitary. Flowers hermaphrodite, actinomorphous, pedicellate, 3-bracteo-late, the bracteoles fugacious or not; receptacle mostly glandular; calyx cupuliform, campanulate or subtubiform, truncate to shortly 5-lobate, coriaceous, accrescent; petals 5, adnate to the base of the staminal column, fleshy, with tufted hairs, fuga-2ious; stamens 150-1,500, apparently 1-whorled, the staminal column divided into many filaments or into 5-10 or 15 distinct phalanges, the anthers 1-thecate, hippo-crepiform, medifixus, extrorse, longitudinally dehiscent; pollen colpate or colporate, the sexine reticulate; ovary superior, sessile, 5(-6-8)-celled, the cells many-ovulate, the ovules inserted on a central columella; style filiform; stigma capitate or 5(-6-8)-lobulate. Capsules subligneous, loculicidally 5(-6-8)-valvate, the central columella winged and persistent; seeds numerous, small, pyriform, imbedded in copious whitish to reddish kapok; cotyledons epigeal and expanded above the ground level, opposite, petiolate, equal, folded, foliaceous to slightly coriaceous, the primordial leaves simple.
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