Small to moderate-sized trees or shrubs with buttress of appressed stilt roots and pneumatophores; bark grey-brown. Leaves opposite decussate, closely borne towards the twig apices, petiolate, obovate-elliptic, entire, leathery and glabrous, free from black dots beneath; stipules lanceolate. Inflorescence of (2-) 4-many-flowered, subsessile to shortly pedunculate, axillary, condensed cymes. Flowers white, c. 1 cm or so long, perigynous, disc cupular, 10-12-sinuate, fleshy; bracteoles partially united into a cup-like structure with ovate lobes. Sepals 5 (-6), borne on a short hypanthium, ovate, acuminate, patent or reflexed in fruit, leathery. Petals as many as sepals, membranous, free or occasionally coherent at the base by hooked-hairy margins, truncate to emarginate and clavate appendaged or fringed at the tips. Stamens 10 (-12), borne in sinuations of the disc in antipetalous pairs; anthers dithecous, oblong or linear, obtuse-acuminate, shorter to longer than the filaments, dehiscing longitudinally. Ovary tricarpellary, syncarpous, half inferior, projecting beyond the hypanthium as a fleshy cone, 3-loculed at least in the upper part, locules biovulate; style simple, thickened below; stigma obscurely trifid or simple. Fruit ovoid, unilocular, monospermous, coriaceous berry. Seeds viviparous, pendulous; embryo exalbuminous, radicle and hypocotyl angular, clavate and tapering to the apex.