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Trees, shrubs or shrublets, glabrous, with yellow pigment under the bark. Leaves petiolate; lamina with margin glandular-serrulate or entire, and characteristic nervation of ascending primary laterals linked by secondary laterals (see specific descriptions); stipules markedly longitudinally striate, laciniate or deeply divided into linear segments, free, persistent on first-year shoots (at least in the African spp.). Inflorescence paniculate or fasciculate or reduced to a single flower, or fascicles secondarily aggregated into spikes or capitula, terminal or at the base of current year’s growth; bracts striate, laciniate, persistent or deciduous; pedicels articulated at the base. Sepals (4) 5, imbricate (usually quincuncial) in bud, white or pink in flower, persistent, enlarging and becoming red and coriaceous in fruit. Petals (4) 5, white to pink, not or scarcely unguiculate, deciduous. Stamens (8) 10–20 (22), free; anthers yellow, dehiscing by longitudinal slits, deciduous; filaments ± slender, approximately equal in length to the anthers, persistent. Carpels (3–4) 5–10, apparently free at the base, 1-ovulate; styles slender, gynobasic, completely united; stigmas terminal, scarcely enlarged. Fruit of 1 to several free black 1-seeded drupelets with fleshy mesocarp, inserted on the enlarged red receptacle. Seeds curved, without endosperm but with an internal projection of the endocarp round which the embryo develops; embryo curved, incumbent or accumbent, isocotylous.