Trees or shrubs. Branchlets usually stellate. Leaves alternate; stipule minute, caducous; petiole short; leaf blade basal veins 3-5, margin serrate or rarely lobed. Flowers bisexual, polygamous, or unisexual (plants monoecious), usually arranged in 3- to many-flowered cymes, solitary or fascicled, axillary or opposite leaves, rarely terminal. Peduncle and pedicel usually hairy. Bracts caducous. Sepals 5, yellow, white, or lilac, rarely brown, free, valvate, abaxially hairy, adaxially usually glabrous, rarely hairy. Petals 5, mostly yellow or white in Flora area, shorter than sepals; glands usually scalelike, borne on base of petals, margin usually villous. Androgynophore short, usually glabrous. Stamens many, free, irregular in length; anthers globose, dorsifixed, dehiscence longitudinal. Ovary 2-4-loculed; ovules 2-8 per locule; style simple; stigma swollen, peltate, entire or 2-4-lobed. Drupe usually with 2 or 4 drupelets. Endosperm copious; cotyledons flat.

Grewia nitida Jussieu (Ann. Mus. Natl. Hist. Nat. 4: 90. 1804) could not be treated here because no material was seen by the authors.

Grewia salviifolia Linnaeus f. is the basionym of Alangium salviifolium (Linnaeus f.) Wangerin in the Alangiaceae (see Fl. China 13: 307. 2007).

About 90 species: tropical regions of Old World; 27 species (13 endemic) in China.