Shrubs or treelets, dioecious. Stipules small. Leaves alternate, shortly petiolate, simple, penninerved. Flowers unisexual, usually in axillary fascicles, female ones sometimes solitary; pedicel short. Male flowers: sepals 5, imbricate; petals 5, longer than sepals; disk absent; stamens [5 or]10 and 2-seriate, inserted on fleshy receptacle, outer ones alternating with petals, inner ones sometimes absent or reduced and scalelike; filaments free; anthers longitudinally dehiscent, 2-loculed; pistillode present. Female flowers: sepals and petals like those of male flowers but slightly larger; ovary fleshy, 2(or 3)[-5]-loculed; ovule 1 in each locule, anatropous; styles short, 2-parted, usually divergent. Drupe usually globose; exocarp scabrous; endocarp bony. Seeds with fleshy endosperm; testa shiny; cotyledons broad and flattened.

About 11 species: nine in tropical Africa, two in Asia; one species in China.