Shrubs or small- to medium-sized trees. Branchlets terete, sometimes slightly angled and ± compressed tetragonous. Leaves opposite or subopposite, ovate to ovate-oblong, thinly leathery, trinerved or triplinerved, petiolate. Flowers bisexual, arranged into an axillary panicle always transversely oriented, narrow and elongate; bracts and bracteoles minute. Perianth tubes very short or almost absent; perianth lobes 6, deciduous, outer ones small, triangular, patent, inner ones very large, broadly triangular-ovate, valvate. Fertile stamens 9, or anthers clavate-oblong and filaments inconspicuous, or anthers square and filaments conspicuously complanate; anthers 4-celled or occasionally all 2-celled, or 2-celled in 1st and 2nd whorls and 4-celled in 3rd whorl; cells introrse in 1st and 2nd whorls, extrorse or lateral-extrorse in 3rd whorl; filaments of 1st and 2nd whorls glandless, those of 3rd whorl each with 2 subsessile glands at base. Staminodes 3, of innermost whorl, minute, sagittate, shortly stalked. Ovary ovoid; style short; stigma inconspicuously 2- or 3-lobed. Fruit shiny green, large, narrowly ellipsoid-globose or ellipsoid, pearlike, rigid; exocarp membranous; mesocarp fleshy and decayed; endocarp cartilaginous; fruit stalk ± thickened, dilated on top. Seed large, hard, like fruit in shape.

About 14 species: tropical Asia and tropical America; three species (one endemic) in China.

(Authors: Li Xiwen (李锡文 Li Hsi-wen), Li Jie (李捷); Henk van der Werff)