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Female flowers: calyx lobes 6, uniseriate, imbricate, pinnatifid, usually with a narrow central rhachis and one terminal and several dark green lateral lobules which are often longer than the width of the calyx-lobe rhachis, accrescent, the calyx-lobe rhachis later becoming hardened and sometimes almost woody; petals absent; disk absent; ovary 3-celled, with 1 ovule per cell; styles 3, almost completely united to form a hollow conical or infundibuliform column, or a subglobose mass.
Male flowers: calyx closed in bud, later splitting into 3 valvate lobes, with or without a basal tube constricted below the limb; petals absent; disk absent; stamens 3–4, alternating with the calyx lobes, filaments short, thickened and sometimes connate at the base, connective thickened; anthers dorsifixed, introrse, 2-celled, the cells parallel, longitudinally dehiscent; pistillode present, small, circular or 3-lobed.
Inflorescences leaf-opposed or terminal on short axillary shoots, racemose, usually mostly male with 1–2 female flowers at the base.
Fruit 3-lobed, dehiscing into 3 bivalved cocci; pericarp thin, crustaceous; endocarp thick, woody; columella trifid, not persistent.
Leaves alternate, petiolate or subsessile, stipulate, simple or palmately-lobed, serrate, palminerved.
Monoecious erect or twining perennial herbs with a simple indumentum, mixed with urticating bristles.
Bracts conspicuous, persistent, 1-flowered.
Seeds globose, mottled, ecarunculate.
Flowers shortly pedicellate.
Cotyledons broad, flat.
