Large shrubs, often with straggling horizontal armed spines paired or unpaired branches. Stipules small, membranous, triangular, acuminate. Flowers bisexual, few or solitary arising from lateral ‘spurt’. Calyx lobes foliaceous. Ovary 2-locular. Placentas 2, attached to the septum of the ovary. Fruit crowned by the persistent calyx, with thick pericarp; endosperm not ruminate.