Shrubs or trees, unarmed, with rust-colored villosulous indumentum (sometimes becoming bleached) on terminal and axillary buds and usually on young inflorescences. Leaves alternate [rarely opposite], odd-pinnate, 1-foliolate, or simple. Inflorescences terminal and/or axillary, paniculate, compoundly racemose, or reduced to 1 or a few flowers. Flowers bisexual, globose to ellipsoid in bud. Sepals 4 or 5, basally connate. Petals 4 or 5, imbricate in bud. Stamens 8 or 10, distinct, alternately ± unequal in length; filaments ± straight. Disk annular, pulvinate, columnar, conic, or bell-shaped. Gynoecium 2-5-loculed, syncarpous; radial walls of locules straight; ovules 1(or 2) per locule; style to nearly as long as ovary, persistent in fruit. Fruit a berry, with mucilaginous pulp or dry, without 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.

About 50 species: E, S, and SE Asia, Australia; 11 species (two endemic) in China.

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