Shrubs or small trees. Leaves alternate, petiolate, discolourous; stipules scarious (rarely leathery), free, often overlapping on the adaxial side of the petiole. Inflorescences mostly terminal, comprising contracted cymes borne in little-branched panicles or pseudoracemes. Flowers bisexual, 5-partite, pedicellate, white, cream, yellowish or greenish. Hypanthium shallowly cup-shaped (urceolate and shortly tubular in T. urceolare). Sepals spreading at anthesis. Petals spathulate, clawed, cupped around anther in bud, incurved to spreading after anthesis. Stamens subequal to petals, incurved. Disc conspicuous, forming a convoluted rim around the edge of the hypanthium, smooth, glabrous (rarely papillose or stellate-hairy). Ovary inferior; carpels 2 or 3; style glabrous, deeply (2) 3-branched (rarely minutely 3-lobed). Fruit an ellipsoid or globular (trigonous in T. monospermum) schizocarpic capsule, 1–3-celled, releasing the indehiscent, bony, 1-seeded fruitlets which are usually brown resinous-corrugate on the inner face. Seeds reddish brown, darker at base; aril very small, easily detached.
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