Shrubs, small trees, or rarely large trees, evergreen, dioecious. Current year branchlets terete or 2- or 4-ribbed; winter buds exposed. Leaves distichous; leaf blade margin usually serrulate. Flowers axillary or congested on leafless branchlets, solitary to several in a cluster, small, pedicellate. Bracteoles 2, close to sepals, alternate. Sepals 5, persistent, imbricate, unequal. Petals 5, white or yellowish, basally slightly connate. Male flowers: stamens 5-35, in 1 whorl; filaments linear, glabrous, free or adnate to base of petals; anthers ovate-oblong to oblong, basifixed, 2-loculed, sometimes locellate (constricted at several places along anther length), connective slightly exserted; pistillode conspicuous. Female flowers: stamens usually absent or sometimes present as staminodes; ovary superior, 2-5-loculed with 3-60 ovules per locule, placentation axile; style 2-5, distinct or variously connate. Fruit baccate, globose, ovoid, or ellipsoid, with 2-60 seeds per locule. Seeds black, globose, shiny, foveolate-pitted; endosperm fleshy; embryo recurved.

Although some Eurya species are very distinctive, many of them are very similar and difficult to differentiate. It is quite possible that future systematic studies may decrease the number of recognized species in China.

Eurya cavaleriei H. Léveillé (Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 9: 450. 1911) is a synonym of Symplocos cochinchinensis (Loureiro) S. Moore var. laurina (Retzius) Nooteboom in the Symplocaceae (see Fl. China 15: 249. 1996).

Eurya esquirolii H. Léveillé (Fl. Kouy-Tchéou, 415. 1914-1915) is the basionym of Litsea esquirolii (H. Léveillé) C. K. Allen (1936, not H. Léveillé, 1911), which is in turn the replaced synonym of L. kobuskiana C. K. Allen in the Lauraceae (see Fl. China 7).

About 130 species: Bhutan, Cambodia, China, NE India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam; Pacific islands; 83 species (63 endemic) in China.