Shrubs, subshrubs or annual herbs, glabrous or variously hairy, without latex, monoecious or dioecious. Branchlets deciduous or persistent, terete or ribbed. Stipules small, triangular or subulate, persistent. Stem leaves alternate, mostly laminate on young shoots, sometimes throughout, mostly becoming scale-like distally, rarely scale-like throughout. Branchlet leaves alternate, petiolate, usually laminate, rarely scale-like, usually distichous. Inflorescences axillary, bracteate, of solitary flowers or fascicles of usually pendulous, pedicellate flowers, sometimes pedunculate, mostly unisexual with females mostly distal, sometimes sexes coaxillary. Sepals 6 in 2 whorls, free or variously connate, the sexes mostly dissimilar, females larger. Disc absent or reduced to swellings at sepal bases in male flowers. Male flowers: sepals free or connate forming a 6-lobed tube or cup-like with 6 or 12 lobes; stamens 3 in 1 whorl; filaments and connectives mostly connate into an androphore with anthers adnate, sometimes androphore apically 3-branched with anthers free or partly free; anthers longitudinal, linear or elliptic, extrorse; pistillode absent. Female flowers: ovary 3-locular; ovules 2 per locule; style absent; stigmas 3, entire or bifid. Fruit a septicidal, often also loculicidal, ovoid or ellipsoid cartilaginous schizocarp; columella persistent. Seeds ± crescentiform, mostly prismatic, ecarunculate, variously ornamented; hilum ± central on adaxial edge, large, elliptic.
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