Tall, soft-wooded, succulent shrubs; stems with smooth mealy bark. Leaves fleshy, alternate on the young shoots, clustered on short side branchlets on older wood, often absent at flowering time. Inflorescence a congested panicle, terminal or on axillary branchlets; flowers pedicellate, subtended by small, scale-like bracts. Sepals broadly ovate, deeply concave, rounded, firm with hyaline margins, persistent; petals usually 5, free, broad, rounded, concave, membranous; stamens many in 2 whorls, filaments woolly below the middle; ovary superior, several ovules on a basal placenta, style with a small rounded swelling at its base, stigma simple; collapsed petals, stamens and style shed together at maturity. Capsule dome-shaped, coriaceous, valvate, the valves opening from below and often curling outwards forming a cap. Seeds obovoid to subglobose, only 1(–2) ripening per capsule, black, smooth, glossy, a large, pale, verruculose aril enclosing the base.