Dioecious evergreen or deciduous trees or shrubs. Leaves entire, usually penninerved, usually spirally arranged. Flowers in stalked umbels, surrounded by usually 4 large sub-persistent bracts; the umbels in panicles or racemes. Tepals 6 or none in 2 whorls. Male flowers with 12-18 stamens in whorls of 3, the 2 outer whorls glandless, the inner with stalked or sessile glands; filaments slender, long; anthers 4-celled, usually all introrse (basal ones sometimes latrorse) ; pistil rudiment small or none. Female flower with as many staminodes with sterile, small anthers and long filaments, glands present. Ovary with a distinct style and a small peltate stigma. Fruit seated on or in the enlarged cup- or disc-shaped perianth tube; the tepals, as a rule, caducous.