Trees, sometimes with buttresses or with pneumatophores, glabrous except a fine subglandular puberulence on the inflorescences, the petals excluded. Branchlets and buds often vernicose. Leaves spiral, entire, coriaceous to various degrees, dark green to yellowish green above, paler beneath, sometimes tubercled on the undersurface, midrib narrowly sunken above, bold beneath, nerves pinnate, looping; petiole robust. Umbels axillary and generally solitary, peduncled, each branch of the umbel bearing the flowers either distally and crowded, or uni-or biseriately (scorpioid) along its upper, mostly ± recurved part; bracteoles at the base of the umbel conspicuous, sometimes persistent. Flowers bisexual, sessile, white to yellowish, fragrant. Calyx cup-shaped, base ± truncate, limb truncate or 5-lobed to various degree, persistent. Petals (4-)5, valvate in bud, connate at base only, oblong, apex inflexed, midrib or keel often raised on both faces, caducous. Stamens (4-)5; filaments fleshy, flat, widened upwards, shortly bearded be-low the anther on the ventral side, and long-penicillate distally on the backside, the penicilli inflexed in bud, at full anthesis erect and much exserted; cells ovate-elliptic, basifixed, a little diverging downwards. Disk rim-like or patellar, or mostly a short, whether or not shallowly lobed cup, surrounding the very base of the ovary, the latter ovoid-conical much attenuate towards the very short slender style and the punctiform stigma, unilocular, with 2 pendant ovules. Drupe ovoid, ellipsoid or oblongoid-fusiform; exocarp thin, the lower ⅓ part dark red to purple, the upper part white to cream or greenish; endocarp firm, coriaceous to woody, its outer part fibrous. Seed 1; embryo small, in the top of the albumen.
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