Trees or shrubs, stellate velutinous or scurfy and scaly. Leaves simple; stipules linear to palmately fimbriate, sometimes forming nectaries, caducous; petiole short; leaf blade lobed or not, leathery, base often oblique, margin entire or serrate, apex sometimes truncate; juvenile leaves sometimes much larger, petiole long, leaf blade often with peltate base and prominently palmately lobed. Inflorescence axillary, 1-flowered or cymose and 1-5-flowered. Flowers bisexual; epicalyx lobes usually 3, usually distant from calyx, entire, fimbriate, or palmately lobed, rarely absent, caducous. Calyx 5(or 6)-lobed, divided nearly to base, usually spreading to ± reflexed, caducous. Petals 5, white or yellow, often erect. Androgynophore present, very short, glabrous. Stamens 15, in 5 groups of 3 alternating with staminodes; filaments connate into tube, free at top; anthers 2-celled, cells parallel, connective pointed; staminodes 5, filiform, longer and thicker than filaments. Ovary 5-locular; ovules 4-22 per locule; style clavate or filiform; stigma longitudinally 5-grooved. Fruit a schizocarp, cylindric or ovoid, angular or rounded, usually woody, sometimes leathery, dehiscent into 5 loculicidal mericarps when mature. Seeds 2 to many per locule, with long, oblong, membranous wing; endosperm scanty or absent; cotyledons usually plicate, simple. 2n = 38.

Sterculia peltata G. Don (Gen. Hist. 1: 517. 1831), based on material from China, has long petiolate 5-lobed peltate leaves that are abaxially puberulent and adaxially glabrous, and has stems and petioles with a white tomentum. The leaf form is much more suggestive of juvenile material of Pterospermum than a species of Sterculia but the white indumentum is difficult to match with the species known from China.

Between 18 and 40 species: tropical and subtropical Asia; nine species (five endemic) in China.