Monoecious little-branched undershrubs or small trees with a simple indumentum. Leaves alternate, sometimes pseudoverticillate, often clustered at the apex of the stem, subsessile or shortly petiolate, stipulate or not, usually elobate, shallowly toothed to subentire, minutely glandular-punctate beneath, penninerved. Inflorescences bisexual, racemose, axillary, solitary, each with many ♂ flowers in 1-few-flowered bracteate clusters along the axis, and 1 solitary terminal ♀ flower, rarely more. Male flowers: pedicels usually long; calyx ovoid in bud, later valvately 3–4(–5)-partite, the sepals reflexed; petals 0; disc-glands numerous, contiguous, disposed amongst the stamens; stamens 50-many, filaments free, flexuous, the anthers small, subglobose, subdorsifixed, introrse, the connective rather broad, longitudinally dehiscent; pistillode 0; receptacle hemispherical. Female flowers usually sessile; sepals (4–)5(–6), imbricate, biseriate; petals 0; disc 0; ovary 3-locular, with one ovule per locule, 6-winged or-horned; styles 3, usually connate below into a column, free above and erecto-patent, undivided, the stigmas capitate or slightly dilated. Fruits 3-lobed, 6-winged or-horned, dehiscing septicidally into 3 bivalved cocci, each valve 1-winged or-horned, leaving a persistent columella; endocarp thinly woody. Seeds ovoid-trigonous or sub-globose, ecarunculate, albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat.
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