Trees or shrubs, evergreen. Bark usually gray and smooth or sometimes coarsely deeply furrowed. Twigs with annular stipular scar. Stipules membranous, free or adnate to petiole and leaving a stipular scar on petiole. Leaves spirally arranged, folded in bud, erect when young; leaf blade thickly papery or leathery, margin entire. Flowers terminal on terminal brachyblasts, solitary, bisexual, large, usually fragrant. Tepals 9-12, in 3 or 4 whorls, subequal. Stamens caducous; filaments flat; connective elongated, forming a short or long tip; anthers dehiscing introrsely. Gynoecium linked to androecium, without a gynophore. Carpels few to many, distinct; styles curved outward; ovules 2 per carpel or rarely in basal carpels 3 or 4; stigmas papillate, located in adaxial side of carpel. Fruit usually ovoid; mature carpels distinct, leathery or woody, dehiscing along dorsal sutures, apex long or shortly beaked. Seeds 1 or 2 per carpel; testa orangish red or bright red, fleshy, oily; endotesta rigid, hilum connected to placentation by filiform funiculus.

About 20 species: Central America, E and S North America, including Mexico and Antilles; one species (introduced) in China.