Trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate, simple, entire, penninerved. Flowers in terminal or more rarely axillary panicles, hermaphrodite, regular. Sepals 5, united at the base to give small deltoid lobes, persistent in fruit. Petals 5, free, valvate, oblong-linear, glabrous. Stamens 5, alternating with the petals; filaments subulate, basally attached to petal; anthers almost sagittate. Disk absent. Ovary unilocular, bearing a fleshy lateral lobe; style eccentric; stigma truncate, very small; ovules 2, pendulous. Fruit a drupe, with a large lateral appendage, and bearing remains of persistent style.