Climbing shrubs or lianas, rarely small trees. Leaves alternate, leathery or nearly so, rarely papery, conspicuously reticulate, base asymmetric, margin entire or toothed. Flowers small, bisexual, 5-merous, few in fascicles or in shortly pedunculate cymes, or in terminal or axillary, cymose panicles. Sepals 5, triangular, adaxially medially keeled. Petals obovate-orbicular, apex emarginate, rarely absent. Disk thick, fleshy, pentagonous. Ovary globose, immersed in disk, 2-loculed, with 1 ovule per locule; styles 2-fid. Fruit a 1-seeded, indehiscent samara, 1/3-1/2 of base surrounded by persistent calyx tube, apex with longitudinally elongating oblong wing, with relict styles; endocarp globose, thin, woody, 1-loculed, 1-seeded. Seeds without endosperm; cotyledon thick.

Ventilago zhengdei G. S. Fan (J. Nanjing Forest. Univ. 28(1): 107. 2004), described from Yunnan, could not be treated here because no material was seen by the authors.

About 40 species: Old World tropics; six species (two endemic) in China.