Dioecious or monoecious shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate, shortly petiolate, simple, entire, penninerved. Stipules triangular to lanceolate, somewhat persistent. Flowers axillary and fasciculate on leafy shoots, or on short leafless shoots, the ♂ and ♀ flowers often intermingled. Bracts triangular. Male flowers: pedicels long and slender or flowers sessile; sepals (4–)5(–6), united at the base, imbricate; petals (4–)5(–6), shorter than, equalling or exceeding the sepals; disc of 5 free or united glands which may be petaloid or not, and opposite the sepals, with or without a second whorl of smaller glands opposite the petals; stamens 5, opposite the disc-glands, filaments free, anthers introrse, 2-thecous, longitudinally dehiscent; pistillode minute, 3(–5)-lobed. Female flowers: pedicels, sepals and petals ± as in the ♂; disc-glands often flatter than in the ♂; ovary 3-locular, with 2 ovules per locule; styles free or connate at the base, bifid or bipartite. Fruit dehiscent at the base, the bivalved cocci often persisting on the columella; seeds often 1 per locule due to abortion, subglobose, ecarunculate; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat.
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