Unarmed, monoecious evergreen trees with milky, sticky thick latex. Leaves petiolate, alternate, large, simple, entire or pinnatifid, rarely pinnate compound; stipules lateral, amplexicaule, deciduous leaving annular scars. Male inflorescence a pseudocatkin, pedunculate, solitary or paired in leaf axils, globose, oblong or club-shaped, smooth. Male flowers: calyx 24-lobed or partite, lobes imbricate; stamen single, filament erect, anther included or exerted; pistillode absent. Female inflorescence cauliflorous, stout peduncled, solitary axillary, globose or oblong, prickly, scaly, warty or chequered. Female flowers: calyx tubular, basally thin, sunken in the inflorescence axis, 34-toothed and thick round the style, enlarged in fruit; ovary with an obscure central or t lateral style, stigma spathulate or ± peltate, occasionally 2-341d. Fruit a fleshy, small to gigantic, smooth, prickly, scaly, warted or chequered swap with fleshy alyx. Seeds medium to large.