Dioecious or monoecious, glabrous annual or perennial herbs, often slender and weak.Leaves alternate or opposite, petiolate or sessile, stipulate, sometimes stipellate, simple, entire or toothed, palminerved.Inflorescences axillary or terminal, cymose, racemose or paniculate, unisexual or rarely bisexual; male inflorescences many-flowered, female few-flowered.Male flowers shortly pedicellate, open in bud; sepals 5, scarcely imbricate at the base; petals absent; disk glands interstaminal, turbinate, sometimes confluent; stamens (4)10(14), 2-seriate, the outer ones alternate with the sepals, filaments free, short, anthers basifixed, the cells distinct, globose, divaricate, dehiscing from the apex; pistillode absent.Female flowers: pedicels often reflexed; sepals more or less as in the male, but longer; petals absent; disk glands 3, alternating with the carpels; ovary 3-locular, with 1 ovule per loculus; styles 3, more or less connate at the base, patent-recurved, bifid or bipartite.Fruits 3-lobed, small, dehiscing septicidally into 3 bivalved cocci; endocarp thin.Seeds ovoid-subglobose, ecarunculate; testa thinly crustaceous; albumen fleshy; cotyledons scarcely broader than the radicle.