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Small trees or shrubs. Leaves alternate to opposite or rarely subverticillate, penninerved, glabrous, often aromatic. Inflorescences axillary, consisting of false umbels with up to +/- 15 flowers arranged in (sometimes condensed) racemes, before anthesis with an involucre of decussate, usually persistent bracts, appearing with or before new leaves. Flowers unisexual, 3-merous. Perianth: tube almost flat to deeply cup-shaped, persistent and enlarged as a +/- developed fruit cup on a usually not enlarged pedicel. Tepals 0-9, equal or unequal, yellow, green, or white, glabrous, often caducous during anthesis. Male flowers with 5-20 fertile stamens, several inner ones with glands (irregularly 3-merous flowers with 9 stamens, the third whorl with 2 glands); filaments usually longer than anthers; anthers 4-locular, all introrse or basal pair of third staminal whorl lateral; staminodes usually 0; pistillode well developed to 0; receptacle small and flat. Female flowers with 9-12 staminodes. Ovary globose or ovoid; style thick; stigma dilate. Fruit a red drupe, globose-ovoid or subcylindrical, seated in a +/- developed cup or disc; tepals usually deciduous. x= 12 ( polyploidy).