Dioecious or polygamo-dioecious (with an occasional male flower on a female inflorescence) trees or shrubs.Indumentum simple.Leaves alternate, petiolate, stipulate, simple, entire or subentire, palminerved.Inflorescences terminal, interruptedly racemose; bracts 1–several-flowered.Male flowers: pedicels jointed; calyx closed in bud, later splitting into 2–5 valvate lobes; petals 4–5, free, imbricate; disk glands 4–5, free, alternating with the petals; stamens 6–14, connate at the base into a short column, 2-seriate with the outer series short and opposite the petals andthe inner longer and opposite the sepals, anthers dorsifixed, the outer introrse, the inner extrorse, longitudinally dehiscent, connective broad; pistillode absent.Female flowers: pedicels jointed; sepals 4–5, ± free, ± equal, imbricate; petals 4–5, larger than the sepals, free, imbricate; disk shallowly cupular; ovary 3-locular, with 1 ovule per loculus; styles 3, connate at the base, bifid.Fruits trilobate-subglobose, dehiscing septicidally into 3 bivalved cocci; endocarp thinly woody.Seeds ecarunculate; testa crustaceous; albumen fleshy; cotyledons broad, flat.