Trees or shrubs, deciduous. Leaf blade 5-foliolate; leaflet blades on both surfaces with sparsely scattered, conspicuous, brown or dark red glands, margin entire. Thyrse shortly cylindric-conic; branches compound; bracts subulate, small. Flowers rather small. Sepals connate only at base. Petals ± equal, narrowly oblong or oblanceolate, not clawed, reflexed from middle, with 2 small scales at base adaxially. Ovary fusiform with a long gynophore; style short; stigma 3-lobed. Capsule pyriform, abruptly tapering at base into a long (1-1.5 cm) gynophore, 1-5-seeded; pericarp smooth. Seeds subovoid or ± ellipsoid, relatively small (0.8-1.1 cm); testa glossy black; hilum a 2-layered arillode occupying ca. 1/2 of seed.

Handeliodendron was reluctantly placed in the Sapindaceae by Rehder (loc. cit.), and has been retained there by subsequent authors, even though it is an anomaly in that family. It shares many morphological characters with Aesculus and Billia and is better placed in the Hippocastanaceae. Such a placement is supported by rbcL and matK molecular data published by Harrington et al. (Syst. Bot. 30: 365-381. 2005), who gave it as the sister taxon of Aesculus and Billia, with that clade the sister taxon of the Aceraceae.

● One species: China.

(Authors: Xia Nianhe (夏念和); Nicholas J. Turland, Paul A. Gadek)