Small trees or shrubs, sometimes climbing, deciduous or evergreen, the branchlets with large pith, the winter buds small, with 2–4 outer scales. Leaves involute, alternate, simple, petiolate, membranaceous to coriaceous, glabrous or pubescent, serrate to serrulate; venation pinnate-reticulate; stipules small, caducous. Inflorescences axillary or terminal, racemes or spikes, erect or pendulous, few-to many-flowered, with each flower subtended by a bract; pedicel articulated or inconspicuous, apically with two basally united prophylls. Flowers bisexual or functionally unisexual and then plants dioecious, pedicellate or sessile; sepals 2+2, decussate, imbricate, the outer two smaller; petals 4, free, imbricate, yellow, greenish, pinkish or white; stamens 4+4, diplostemonous, distinct; anthers tetrasporangiate, deeply sagittate, opening by longitudinal slits, dorsi fixed, introrse, versatile; nectary at base of gynoecium well developed on sepaline radii; carpels 4; ovary syncarpous, superior, incompletely 4-locular due to intrusion of parietal placentae, sometimes pubescent; style simple, short, apical, stigma wet, capitate; placentation parietal (in upper part of ovary) to axile (in basal part), ovules numerous, arranged in two alternating rows in each carpel, anatropous, crass-inucellate, bitegmic. Fruit berry-like, with leathery pericarp and deciduous calyx; seeds numerous, small, with soft funicular aril and sclerotic testa; endosperm copious, fleshy, oily and albuminous, not starchy, perisperm 0; embryo straight, small, with short, fleshy funicle; cotyledons elliptic, flat, radicles short. n = 12.