Annuals, short-living perennial herbs, shrubs or trees, glabrous or covered with simple and often short hairs. Leaves alternate, fleshy, terete, semi-terete, or flattened. Inflorescence bracteose. Bracteoles present, small, hyaline. Flowers small, usually hermaphrodite, rarely unisexual, solitary or in clusters. Perianth parted into (4) 5 equal, more or less green, herbaceous or fleshy, free to diversely connate segments. Stamens 5. Ovary sessile, free or rarely adnate to perianth; stigmas 2-4. Fruiting perianth unchanged or becoming fleshy or spongy, with or without protuberances or keel. Fruit subglobose or depressed; pericarp free or adnate to perianth. Seeds horizontal or vertical, dark (black or reddish-brown) and yellow-brownish (= structural heterospermy), dark seeds always possess stalactites in the outer layer of testa that are obliquely oriented (in the majority of species) or vertical (Suaeda sect. Brezia). perisperm 0, rarely scanty (in dark seeeds when present); embryo spirally coiled.