Trees or shrubs, monoecious or dioecious. Branchlets frequently glabrous. Leaves alternate, glandular-crenulate, penninerved; stipule small, deciduous. Inflorescences spicate or racemose, axillary; bracts eglandular. Male flowers fascicled to glomerulose, rarely solitary along axis; calyx closed in bud; sepals 3 or 4, valvate; petals absent; disk absent; stamens 25-80(-100); filaments free; anthers dorsifixed, 4-locellate, connective shortly produced; pistillode absent. Female inflorescences frequently 1-flowered. Female flowers: pedicel long, thickened at tip; sepals 3-5, imbricate, accrescent or scarcely enlarged in fruit; ovary 2- or 3-locular; styles 2 or 3, base often connate, deeply 2-cleft, filiform, stigmatic surface papillose; ovules 1 per locule. Fruit a capsule, 2- or 3-locular; pedicels rigid, club-shaped. Seeds subglobose, smooth, marbled.

About 25 species: Old- and New-World tropics and subtropics; three species in China.

(Authors: Qiu Huaxing (丘华兴 Chiu Hua-hsing, Kiu Hua-shing, Kiu Hua-xing); Michael G. Gilbert)