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Dioecious trees and shrubs, the branches unarmed. Leaves alternate, distichous; stipules lateral. Both staminate and pistillate inflorescences secund racemes and spikes, the small congested or relatively distant flowers interspersed with small, shortly stipitate, peltate bracts. Staminate flowers: tepals 4, united or essentially free to the base, with an obvious pistillode; stamens 4, the filaments much longer than the tepals and strongly inflexed before anthesis, later sharply reflexed, the anthers broadly oval, introrse. Pistillate flowers epigynous; tepals 4, minute; style central and deeply 2-lobed. Fruit a small fleshy 1-seeded drupe.
Dioecious deciduous scrambling shrubs or climbers with or without latex. Leaves alternate, simple, petiolate; stipules small. Inflorescences unisexual, pedunculate. Male inflorescence a spike, densely flowered. Male flowers 3-or 4-partite; filaments inflexed in bud; pistillode present. Female inflorescence capitate. Perfect female flowers: perianth urceolate with small dentate orifice enveloping ovary; style long; stigma bifid. Fruit an achene, ovoid, several in a shallow receptacle; embryo incurved, the longer cotyledon enveloping the smaller.
