Shrubs or trees, unarmed, without rust-colored villosulous indumentum on terminal and axillary buds or young inflorescences. Leaves alternate, odd-pinnate. Inflorescences terminal or axillary, paniculate or in loose racemes. Flowers bisexual or very rarely female, globose to pyriform or rarely ovoid in bud. Sepals 4 or 5, connate at base or to their full length. Petals 4 or 5, imbricate in bud. Stamens 8 or 10, distinct, alternately unequal in length; filaments ± abruptly dilated toward base, ± straight or geniculate. Disk columnar, conic, bell-shaped, or ± hourglass-shaped. Gynoecium (2-)4- or 5-loculed, syncarpous; radial walls of locules straight; ovules 2 per locule; style 0.5-2.5 × as long as ovary, deciduous in fruit. Fruit a berry, with neither pulp nor pulp vesicles; endocarp membranous. Seeds with membranous seed coat; endosperm lacking; embryo straight; cotyledons elliptic, plano-convex, neither convolute nor folded; hypocotyl partly included between cotyledons.

This genus is especially diverse in Guangdong, Guangxi, and Yunnan.

Between ca. 15 and 30 species: Africa, E, S, and SE Asia, NE Australia, SW Pacific islands; ten species (five endemic) in China.

(Authors: Zhang Dianxiang (张奠湘); Thomas G. Hartley)