Perennial herbs or small shrubs, glabrous or variously pubescent with simple (rarely branched) hairs. Leaves small, simple, entire, fleshy, sessile or shortly petiolate. Flowers axillary, solitary or paired, bisexual or rarely unisexual. Perianth usually cup-shaped, shortly 3–5-lobed, accrescent. Stamens 3–5, hypogynous. Ovary thin-walled; stigmas 2 or 3, slender, papillose. Fruiting perianth enveloping utricle as a tube, crustaceous to woody, often with a hollow base filled with moist tissue when fresh; slit or tubercle (radicular tubercle) present opposite radicle; spines 2–6(9) (rarely absent) arising between perianth lobes, a contiguous pair often opposite radicle (radicular spines); perianth lobes and upper portion of tube (above the spines) sometimes prominent (the limb). Utricle thin-walled. Seed horizontal to erect; testa membranous; embryo horseshoe-shaped to annular, the radicle often lying within a radicular tubercle; perisperm central.
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