Evergreen trees, shrubs, or lianas, root parasites. Stipules absent. Leaves alternate, simple, margin entire, penninerved. Inflorescences axillary or cauliflorous, spikes, racemes, or panicles [or umbels, in Africa]; bracts narrowly ovate or scale-like. Flowers small, actinomorphic, (3-)5-merous, bisexual or unisexual and plants then dioecious or gynodioecious (in Champereia). Perianth free or tepals partly united, valvate. Stamens as many as and opposite tepals, free or filaments inserted on tepals; anthers 2-loculed, introrse, dehiscence longitudinal. Disk intrastaminal, lobed, annular, or cupular. Ovary superior or semi-sunken in disk, 1-loculed; ovule 1, pendulous, unitegmic, tenuinucellar; placentation free-central. Style short or none; stigma entire or shallowly lobed. Fruit a drupe. Seed coat thin; endosperm oily; embryo terete, with 3 or 4 linear cotyledons.

Ten genera and 33 species: widespread in tropical and subtropical regions; five genera and five species in China.

(Authors: Qiu Huaxing (邱华兴 Chiu Hua-hsing, Kiu Hua-xing) ; Paul Hiepko)