Shrubs or small trees, bisexual, dioecious or polygamous (gynodioecious). Leaves often whitish underneath between the nerves. Flowers sessile, or, when solitary, on top of a very short peduncle. Bracteoles 2 and strictly opposite, or several (3 or more) and imbricate. Sepals 5. Corolla tube cylindric, as long as or shorter or slightly longer than the sepals (Mal. spp.); tube mostly hairy above the middle inside, rarely glabrous; limb ± deeply 5-parted; lobes valvate in bud, spreading or recurved in the upper portion, their inner surface entirely or partly bearded, rarely glabrous. Stamens wholly or partially enclosed in the tube or the erect base of the lobes, reduced in size and without pollen in ♀♀. Filaments short, filiform, inserted at the top of the corolla tube or almost so, attached at or near the top of the anthers. Disk cup-shaped, truncately 5-lobed, or consisting of 5, ± free lobes. Ovary (2-)5(-10)-celled, with 1 ovule per cell; style mostly short, stigma obtuse. Fruit a baccate drupe, with a compact crustaceous or hard endocarp (putamen) with as many cells as are found in the ovary (or less by abortion); mesocarp around the central stone rarely pulpy, usually rather dry and of a whitish-greenish, pink or rarely (light) red colour (in the Mal. spp. never purplish-blackish) at full maturity.
As substage in forest, mostly in open sunny places, on the seashore and again in the mountains upwards to alpine height in North Borneo and New Guinea, on acid, sandy or peaty soils, often gregarious.
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