Trees, shrubs, or rarely suffrutices. Leaves petiolate or subsessile, alternate, entire or with a serrate or dentate margin, frequently with caducous black glands on the teeth, usually ± coriaceous, penninerved, with densely reticulate tertiary venation; stipules small and caducous or absent. Flowers in axillary racemes, sometimes paniculate. Sepals 5, quincuncial, equal, entire or denticulate, united at the base, persistent. Petals 5, white or greenish-white to yellow, free, persistent in fruit, elongating and often becoming indurated, vertically ribbed, and appressed to the capsule. Stamens 5 or 5 + 5, with filaments inserted on the outer side of a shallow annulus; anthers dorsifixed. Ovary 5-locular, loculi 2-ovulate, with an incomplete false septum; styles terminal, united; stigmas 5, free and radiating or united to form a globular mass. Capsule globose to cylindric or ovoid, coriaceous or ± woody, septicidal, each valve frequently splitting at the apex along the false septum, 1–3 (5)-seeded. Seeds smooth, endospermic, almost surrounded by a fleshy aril.